This novel was crazy from start to finish, in a good way! When I first started this book, I wasn't sure it was going to be for me, but after giving it a chance I really enjoyed it.
This story focuses primarily on two women. Nina, a girl who grew up with a single mother who found creative and deceptive ways to continuously get by. And Vanessa, a rich girl who has family issues of her own and struggled to find her own identity outside her family name.
Nina was a very interesting character and was given depth throughout the book that brought her to life. Vanessa was utterly frustrating to read about, but then reading things from her point of view really changed my opinion of her character.
Nina and her partner Lachlan are planning a con on Vanessa and for Nina it's personal. She was connected to Vanessa's family when she was in high school and has a grudge against them. During flashback chapters we get to understand more of how our characters got to where they are now and what events shaped them in their paths.
The twists in this book kept getting better the more I read, and I was on the edge of my seat unable to read fast enough to find out what was going to happen! The ending was unexpected and pretty well thought out. I was hoping for more with the Epilogue, but it was able to leave readers with imagining what they thought might happen next.
Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing, and Janelle Brown for the chance to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

One of the best suspense no was I've read! Brown writes a suspenseful and brilliant emotional twist of a novel. I actually find myself sas that the novel was over. Such a masterful display of conning and suspense!

The writing was shallow, but enjoyable. This was a easy read for me. The characters you hate to love. They are terrible selfish and focus on their own images. All in all this is a perfect read if you need to pass time say at a doctors office or dentist.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were horrible, and yet you couldn't help but root for them. Nina is a con artist and Vanessa is a spoiled heiress obsessed with her insta-image. But the story takes you back to the root of their behavior, providing you with interesting insights into how and why they become this way. It really drives home that "appearances can be deceiving and no one is what they seem" theme the book has going. The story also goes back and forth between the two characters so you often replay the same event but from a different perspective. Rather than be repetitive, this does help drive the plot and I found it enjoyable.

In some parts, the writing is a little bit shallow and dragging, but for the most part it's smart, witty, and fun. And the twists? I enjoyed all but one. There's was one in particular that I didn't even see coming, and I always enjoy that. But one major twist I felt was lacking and almost too obvious. I think parts of it were just unnecessary, making a long story even longer, and could have been trimmed.

’m just here to add to what Jordy, @beauty_andthebook_ @scaredstraightreads have already said about this one because it was just as amazing as they all said it was! This has everything a great psychological thriller needs, unreliable narrators, twists, lies and most importantly, fantastic writing. The author weaves the most delicious tale of deceit and betrayal and I can’t even wait for everyone to read this one next month!

Wow! I gotta say, Pretty things was a little slow to start but I think that’s by design and it was so worth it! There is definitely a lot of buildup getting to know Nina and those around her, And then when I first began to read from Vanessa’s point of view, I became a little frustrated. All of the characters seemed so shallow, and I have a hard time staying involved in a story when I don’t like the characters. But that’s when it got really good. Because people are so complex, as are the characters in Pretty Things, and when the author really starts breaking down all of their flaws and attributes, it is nothing short of gripping. I am walking away from this book with a true appreciation for the characters, their journeys, the story, the themes, and the lessons held within the pages. Thanks to NetGalley, Janelle Brown, and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I finished Pretty Things last night, and what a wild ride it was! Thanks so much to Random House for sending me this crazy read!

Pretty Things is about Nina, the daughter of a grifter and career con woman, who grows up to follow in her mother’s footsteps. She seeks out the wealthy by lurking on their Instagram feeds, she watches them (and their possessions) and then steals their antiques and art.

Then, when Nina needs to get out of town and find a new mark, she sets out to Lake Tahoe to rent out the caretakers cottage of an Instagram fashion celebrity, Vanessa. Nina and Vanessa’s lives intersect and then collide into a train wreck that you can’t help but watch!

There are seriously so many wild twists in this book, just when I thought I knew how it was all going to pan out, bam! It takes a turn that I never expected and one which make my jaw literally drop!

In addition to the great plot and crazy reveals, Janelle Brown has created two brilliant characters with Nina and Vanessa. I loved reading about them.

Pretty Things is wonderfully crafted and perfectly paced. With social media reaching its peak, this is a timely novel that I see as a big hit this year! Pretty Things publishes 4/21/20, be sure to add it to your TBR, friends!

My copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to the the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review it.

This book was fantastic! I found it to be extremely well written and really enjoyed how the author repeated so many scenes from different perspectives. This technique added depth to the story and made the reader feel a greater connection to the characters. And, what an interesting array of characters they were! No one was quite who you thought they were, and that journey of discovery was one of unending surprises.

3.5 stars. I loved the idea of the story, but I felt the back stories of the characters were too much. I started to get bored. I felt like the first 40% of the book could have been cut down by half and still achieved the same thing. On the upside, the characters were at least interesting, and I enjoyed it once the plot got going.

Pretty Things by Janette Brown is a roller coaster of a book with a very well calculated plot that makes one want to read it quickly so that you can find out how all the twists and turns will be resolved. I could not believe the end!. It was well worth reading into the wee hours of the morning. The four main characters are like snakes in a jar. They wrap around you and squeeze your heart until you find out that each is more dastardly than the other. My only issue was with Benny. He seems to go from sane to insane and back to sane very quickly.

A con artist is scamming an heiress in what she hopes will be the final job that will set her up for life. But is Nina targeting Vanessa for the million dollars cash sitting in her safe… or is it more personal than that?

The twists and turns in this cat-and-mouse book kept me hooked. Would Nina pull off the con of her life? Would Vanessa figure out who Nina really was?

I was torn between which of the women I was rooting for. Nina had been dealt a bad hand in life and was trying to pull her family out of medical debt. Vanessa was born with a silver spoon and the powerful Liebling name. But each woman had her own personal tragedy that humanized her character and made me change my ideal outcome multiple times throughout the book.

I don’t always love dual perspectives in books but I absolutely loved the way the author used this narrative device to show the same event from each character’s viewpoint making me question what I had read from the previous character’s chapters. There are so many layers and second-guessing as to who was the hunter and who was the prey.

After the slow burn of the book, the last bit seemed a bit rushed to me. But I would still recommend this book to lovers of twisty thrillers featuring smart and sarcastic women.

Thank you to NetGalley and RandomHouse for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3158520193

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Lily is a grifter whose daughter,Nina, tries for the straight and narrow but resorts to the family business when times become desperate. Nina devises a con to help care for her ailing mother, but things do not go as planned. There are a multitude of twists and turns in the novel that I did not see coming. The ending is satisfying.

No one is who they present themselves to be, even to those they supposedly love.
Born and raised a grifter, Nina tells herself she had no choice but to fall into the trade. She learned from the best: her own mother. She met her partner in crime (and in bed), Lachlan through her mother. And she never suspected a thing. She was too busy being jealous of the Liebling family, a rich and powerful dynasty from her youth who ruined hers and her mother’s lives. She manifests all her anger towards the daughter Vanessa Leibling, so it makes perfect sense when she and Lachlan plan to make the Liebling dynasty their next victim. But maybe Vanessa isn’t the ultra-rich gullible, wide-eyed spoiled vixen she appears to be after all.
Janelle Brown creates believable and vibrant personalities of her characters then weaves them into such a tangled web of lies and deceit. The setting, a huge mansion full of priceless antiquities sitting on a beautiful lake, sets the perfect stage for this tangled tale of love and theft. I could not stop reading. It was simply that intriguing. And I wasn’t upset with the ending like so many delicious books leave me. This tale has it all: excellent plot, beautiful setting, and entrancing writing.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley for making it available.)

2.5 stars

Well written, but boring. It started off promising and then ebbed off. Lots of long winded back story. It started to get fun again, but while the twists and turns were there, they weren’t as shocking as I was expecting. The author nailed the shallowness and farce of social media though.

I am a huge fan of Janelle Brown so I was super excited to get Pretty Things. I dove right in and wow this book started out with excitement! Then Janelle gave me the back story told in a two different point of views. It got a little slow but I knew she was building for something more. Then we went to present day but also the story told in two different point of views. That was hella interesting at points especially when poo was hitting the ceiling. Then when poo started hitting the ceiling Janelle dropped another jaw dropping twist and I honestly can stay I didn’t think this book was going to end the way it did

Pretty things was 3.5/4ish ⭐️ for me.⁣
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The cover of the book drew me in and the first few chapters about Nina I was invested. She seemed like a bad ass con artist and I loved it.⁣
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Then it became a slow burn for me. It went back and forth between Vanessa and Nina with a lot of character development and I felt like repeated paragraphs.⁣
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I thought about putting this book down a few times but then finally I got 70% of the way through and the drama and twists started picking up and I was left with a pretty solid, epic ending.⁣
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If you don’t mind slow burns, the intrigue is there and it is worth a read, just takes a little while.⁣
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Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for an ARC for my honest review. #netgalley #prettythings #bookstagram

Oh where do I start? 'Dangerous' ... 'scam of a lifetime' ...I don't think that's how I'd describe this one. Two ladies lives come together over some history with a Lake Tahoe home, joining them on the messy ride is Nina's boyfriend Lachlan. I don't think the synopsis is a good representation of this book & really it makes it sound much more exciting than the book actually was. As far as Nina learning from the best, although Nina's mother Lily does not earn an honest living, Lily & Nina's ways of scamming are quite different so I'm not sure I'd say Nina learned anything from her Mom besides being dishonest. And how dangerous can it be when you're basically the big dog vs. a little innocent kitten? I think it took me probably close to two weeks of (trying) to read this every night to finally finish it. I had to make myself finish this one, usually a good book I can't turn the pages fast enough to find out what's next. The beginning of this book, her first heist in the book, made for a strong start but it didn't take long for that to burn out. Somewhere close to the middle she went back to the past when Nina was a teenager and although the background was necessary (honestly probably my favorite part of the book was Nina & Benny as teenagers) & I enjoyed that part of the book it went on so long that it had me thinking where are we in this storyline? Distracting & since I wasn't really invested in the book to begin with it made it that much harder to get into. Easily the first half of this book is spent developing the characters but it could have been done in half the pages while still maintaining her thorough descriptiveness. A lot of the book was very very detailed descriptions of furniture, an outfit, a character -overkill. Many times I found myself feeling like I just read this page/part of the story ( I felt like I was rereading a chapter because they were so similar)...lots of repetitiveness in descriptions & events that took place. Some of the 'repeats' were Vanessa's point of view & then the next chapter the exact same scene but through Nina's point of view. I like the concept of doing that to clarify something that maybe wasn't obvious if seeing through one or the others eyes but it wasn't like that, just more of one of them observing the others actions/reactions not uncovering any wow moments or providing any real twists.Maybe this book blurred together & I'm remembering incorrectly but I feel like Vanessa told Nina (aka Ashley) two different times that her parents died, specifically her Mother's death, like the first time she told Nina/Ashley never took place. What about the scene where all three of them were having the fancy dinner & the person telling the story in that chapter sounded like an observer, a 4th person watching through the window. That person never developed or became anything so it really was just some random chapter. The entire book was either Vanessa or Nina's pov so for me this was confusing because I was waiting for that chapter to materialize into a character in the book..maybe a family member or detective or someone? I guess the very first chapter was written almost as if it were an observer writing it but I feel like since it was the 1st chapter it worked to start the book. I think maybe around 75% into the book it got a little exciting so I was like a horse running to get to the hay in the barn, I wanted to see if this book that I spent the last 2 weeks of my nights reading was worth the ending. I like some of the end "twists" if you want to call them that, if it didn't have them then the book would be a complete dud for me but even in the end, the big picture of the book, it was a pretty weak storyline & to be frank I thought the ending was pretty ridiculous. I'm also left with a ton of questions as to the 'why's' of Lachlan, some of his choices, what he was actually doing behind the closed doors & who was he really talking to on the phone? As long as this book was I feel like I have zero closure on Lachlan's character. With Nina I feel like she was consistent throughout the book, where Vanessa's character was all over the place. When you first meet Vanessa she's shown to be that sterotypical rich girl, stuckup/judgemental...then later her character was shown to have more of a soft side like that was the real Vanessa... more genuine, morals (not the girl to steal another womans bf/husband) but then her character shifted back into the girl that thought she was 'better' & became slightly vindictive. Reason/no reason it doesn't really match with how she was being portrayed or work for me. I did really enjoy the connections the author was trying to give the two women (like she was trying to bond them) but it shifted quickly to the both of them with their agendas.

I actually really enjoyed Brown's writing with the exception of how she put in additions like she was editing/commenting on her own story. Example, she commented on some of her characters comments saying "I like this one!".. "this one not so much". As the author or the character I'm not really sure but it was weird. I could see potentially loving a story by Brown if it wasn't as drawn out & got to the point/to the excitement quicker.

I'd love to hear from anyone that has read a previous book of Janelle Brown's. Did you love any of her other books & not enjoy this one? I'm curious if this is just her style or if this one fell way short. Or maybe it's me & her books aren't for me? I read quite a few reviews of this book saying how it was exciting, twisty, similar to Gillian Flynn (no way!!)? I didn't get that at all, this was a snoozer for me. I unfortunately really struggled to finish this one.

2-1/2 stars rounded down.

Thank you very much to NetGalley & the publisher for this ARC, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity! :)

This was an incredible and thrilling novel that drew me in and never let go. I felt emotionally invested in the characters’ lives and couldn’t stop reading.

From the publisher: This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.

I found the above synopsis perfectly described Janelle Brown's Pretty Things. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and all of the twists and turns it created with the two perspectives. Brown used unreliable narrators extremely well, and I found it hard to dislike either one of them despite their very obvious flaws. This book kept me on my toes up until the end and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys thrillers that have more depth than the usual quick read has.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this great ARC!

"Wealth is a Band-Aid, not an inoculation; and if the disease runs deep enough, it will cure nothing at all."

Two very different women ... one is a con artist and the other an heiress and Instagram Influencer. Both women are on a course of destruction and soon to collide when they meet.

The story alternates back and forth between Nina and Vanessa. The characters are flawed but believable and keeps you engaged. Nina is always looking for the next big con by tricking billionaires out of their money. Vanessa is a trying to be a socialite and her family money is dwindling fast soon after she inherits the family estate in Lake Tahoe.

Nina wants to run another high-stake scheme in order to pay for her mother's expensive cancer treatments and Vanessa is now her target. With the help of Lachlan, a friend of her mother, they set out on a dangerous scam together. But will they succeed? Or do they get the short end of the con? The more you read the more you begin empathizing with all of them to the point that you cheer for each of them to succeed with their cons and revenge.

This is not a thriller, but it does offer enough twists to keep a you interested and going to the very end. At almost 500 pages, it's a long and very slow burn, but I didn't get bogged down by the length at all. Readers that like Gillian Flynn and Ruth Ware will devour this book. Definitely add this to your 2020 TBR list!