"Pretty Guilty Women by Gina LaManna" is an extremely readable book that digs into deep issues such as what success looks like versus what it actually is, domestic violence, motherhood in all its shapes and forms. I liked that the characters were women of all ages, from twenty to seventy: the breadth provided a variety of perspectives and voices and points of view. A fast moving plot twisted and turned to a satisfying conclusion.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book!

This was a fun read. I liked how distinct all the characters were, and how all the problems in their lives were displayed. Each has something another wants, but is the grass really greener on the other side? And who killed the mystery man?

I thought that there was a good balance between mystery, crime, and humanity. I love the layers that are peeled back, and how nothing is quite what it seems. There were several good twists, and I found this to be a real page turner!

Great story line! A reminder that you never know what someone else is going/has gone through. We often judge others by their social media or from a distance and think the grass is greener. Meanwhile...someone is doing the same to us while we wallow in our misery. The grass is always greener! Most of our problems are minuscule in the scheme of things. The author did an excellent job of developing each character without making the book seem overly gossipy. Your wheels will be turning trying to figure out who did it and what could possibly go wrong next. No one's life is perfect. This book is very relatable; you'll surely find yourself in one of the characters.

This murder mystery starts out backwards from the typical plot line: you know someone has been murdered, but just not specifically who it is. You have several characters provide their confessions to the investigator, so clearly someone isn't telling the truth since their stories don't exactly match up. As the book unfolds, you lean more about the protagonists who are old college girlfriends attending a mutual friend's wedding after many years later. The usual suspects are well drawn, with mostly middle-aged women that all have their issues of one sort or another: a barren couple that is on the verge of breaking up over that problem, a family with a surly teenager and the conflicts that contains, another couple where the husband seems to be having an affair, and so forth. The plot moves along briskly and the story is quite realistic and engaging. Mystery fans will like the fresh take and while it isn't too hard to figure out the ending, there are a few surprise twists and turns along the way. I really enjoyed this book and recommend you pick it up.

Fantastic! This an extremely clever story. This is a book about 4 girls that roomed together in college. Many years later, they gather to see Whitney finally marrying the man of her dreams. This story is woven together touching on the past, while staying in the present. When a murder happens at the rehearsal dinner, the detective tries to solve the crime with 4 women stepping up to say they did it. Will the detective unravel who the real killer is? Can the 4 roommates put the past behind them and see each other in new light?

Highly recommend.

I enjoyed this story about a diverse group of women, some reuniting and some meeting for the first time at a resort the week of a wedding. There’s mystery, complicated pasts, and a death - all great ingredients for an interesting storyline.

The premise of the story is four estranged college friends (and a few other ladies) meet up for one of their weddings where a man ends up murdered, and multiple women are confessing to killing him! Quite the opposite of a typical investigation!
The story really focuses mostly on the friends and their relationships and struggles since college. There was also a few other ladies that joined in their group during the wedding week (yes, week!). Although the struggles they were dealing with were relatable, I struggled to see the tight bond formed in such a short time that would compel them to all confess to a murder.
There was also a bit of a mystery about who got murdered, who did the murdering, why all these ladies are confessing, and a few other personal issues with the ladies. I had a few of these mysteries figured out by the end but didn't figure out everything.
It does help you see a few lessons about being happy with the life you have, not assuming other's lives are as put together/perfect as they may seem to you, and such.
Overall it wasn't a bad book, it was entertaining, but it didn't grab me. Not exactly sure why.

Pretty Guilty Women by @ginalamanna
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“Let’s cut to the chase and save us some time— I am responsible for a man’s death tonight. Is that what you needed to hear?”
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A group of former college roommates get together to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends. The story takes place at a fancy resort in California. Despite the fact that the former besties have become estranged, they somehow get mixed up in a murder... and the story unravels from there.
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I received this book as an ARC courtesy of @sourcebooks and @netgalley and I wish this was being released sooner so I could recommend it as a beach read! The story, itself, shifts perspective between four very different women as they each confess to committing murder. But it’s impossible that all four of them have done it- so the plot becomes an unraveling of sorts. I really liked this one and blew through it while... in California (no I didn’t plan that one). It’ll be released in September of 2019, so keep an eye out for this one!
@thebookblondie

Four different women offer four very different confessions to the death of a man found in the midst of a rehearsal dinner at an luxurious resort, each insisting they acted alone. Their stories are contradicting and confusing, posing a conundrum for the detective who must untangle their secrets.

Truth and friendship surface in surprising ways, but who is the guiltiest of them all and what really happened on that rooftop?

This was a great, light mystery that was a refreshing read for me since I usually read darker mystery/thriller types of books. It made me think of the book Big Little Lies, which I really enjoyed, so I read this one pretty quickly.

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC of Pretty Guilty Women by Gina LaManna
Pub Date: 03 Sep 2019

From the beginning, we know a man is dead and four women have pleaded guilty to murdering him, however we don't know who died or why. This is a very entertaining read that I enjoyed throughout. I look forward to reading more books by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a Kindle ARC of Pretty Guilty Women.

I thought Pretty Guilty Women was a straight up mystery, when in fact, its about the relationships of several women and the mystery itself does not feature as the main focus of the book.

I didn't like any of the women and the majority of the book was focused on each woman's personal troubles, of which I was not interested in.

This wasn't for me.

I received a copy of "Pretty Guilty Women" from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The premise of the story was quite promising starting with four women confessing to the same murder. But as the story unfolds, I find it very hard to connect with any of the characters. The storyline became quite predictable halfway through. It's an easy, quick read, but it's no match for Liane Moriarty's "Big Little Lies".

This book tried to do too much, and as a result, didn’t do anything particularly well. A lot of this book was vague just to move the plot along. It lacks the mystery and suspense necessary to make this a fun, page-turning thriller.

The main theme of the book is motherhood. What does it mean to be a good mother, to want to be a mother, to not want to be a mother, to feel like a mother? It was nice to see all the women embody motherhood in different ways and stages, but I would have appreciated some more character development to round out this exploration.

The book ends each chapter with a character talking to the detective investigating the case. This could have been a fun narrative device, but the writing made it fall flat. You learn clues as the book goes on, but they rarely tie in with the main storyline so it usually feels out of place.

Whitney Debleu is marrying into the Banks family & marking the occasion with a weeklong celebration at an isolated spa & resort. On the night of the rehearsal dinner, a man dies and five women claim to be the murderer. The story is alternately narrated by the women. Whitney's college friends attend the events event though all have let time create a distance (along with old grudges). Ginger is married with 3 children, bills, and still married to the man she met in college. Emily has focused on her career while nursing past hurts. Kate is a lawyer who has been focused on her bio clack with boyfriend Max. The life stories are told in between interviews with the police. Lulu Banks is married to the groom's uncle and wonders if her marriage will last past this trip. The final "pretty guilty woman" is Sydney, of the poor side of the Banks family, who draws the women together with her beautiful baby Lydia. Not all is what it seems as the story unfolds and the reader discovers who died, who is the murderer, and why all of the women claimed to be the killer.

The pace was fast and kept the plot moving well. It is reminiscent of Big Little Lies (to me). Overall, take the time to read this thrilling novel to unravel the truth.

This is a fun read! From the beginning, we know there is a dead body, but we don’t know who or why. Each chapter gives us insight into the lives of our four main characters, plus most chapters feature a snippet of police interview around the murdered body. Each of the four women confess to killing the same person. Figuring out what happens over the course of this destination wedding is quite the ride and I didn’t see the ending coming. Plus, the author makes the reader really connect with the characters. Overall, it’s a great book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an free copy in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
I thought that this book was an intriguing and addictive thriller with a lot of twists and surprises.
I would definitely read another book by this author.

Pretty Guilty Women is a brilliant suspense fiction novel about four women, each confessing to the same murder. This book was a real page turner; a fast paced murder mystery that explores secrets, mistakes, forgiveness, friendships, infertility, heartache and much more. I couldn’t determine who had died and which of the women was responsible for the murder until the end. This was a Intense, powerful, and wholly original novel that I absolutely loved and highly recommend. An advance reader copy was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I was first attracted to Pretty Guilty Women on NetGalley because I thought it was a Liane Moriarty novel, Truly Madly Guilty, so I shouldn’t have been too surprised by lots of similarities to Liane Moriarty novels. Pretty Guilty Women is broken up with conversations with a detective investigating a murder, just like in Big Little Lies, and the identity of the murder victim is obfuscated for most of the novel, just like in Big Little Lies (but don’t worry he’s a total jerk, just like in Big Little Lies, so it’s ok for all the ladies to lie to the cops,  just like in Big Little Lies).

But where Big Little Lies has readers rooting for the women from the start, allowing readers to overlook some of the goofier plotpoints, Pretty Guilty Women seemed like it was checking the female character Tragic Backstory boxes. (High-powered Career Woman Secretly Struggling With Infertility is prob my least favorite archetype, and if a novel's just gotta use it, at least throw me a lifestyle-porn bone here, and give me some handbags, shoes, and Manhattan real estate.)  The novel has shifting third-person perspective, which can be difficult if the characters are so similar that I had trouble remembering who was who. This was compounded by every character's desire to strike up friendships with strangers at pre-wedding festivities, offer personal favors, and drop big hints to her Secret Tragic Backstory. Characters all seemed to know the same things and draw the same conclusions, which didn't help me differentiate them between them.

The women as a whole also managed to be blindsided by things that were super definitely coming. Kate's interior monologue about how Max is about to dump her is interrupted when Max dumps her, and she's surprised? Very surprised?  (I really did appreciate naming the rich jerk Max Banks, I got a kick out of it every time Kate charged something else to his room.)

The book's about a murder and false confessions, but the really memorable moment for me was when Ginger fondly looked over at her husband, noting lovingly that although she was always primarily responsible for looking after kids, house, logistics and holding down her own job, dear Frank would step in, just before she lost it completely. Ugh, a husband who takes the kids on occasion, as his wife's about to break down? Please spare me from that love story.  But since the other men were flatly evil (Henry, Daniel, Max), this was a rare moment of nuance.

I usually love stories about women's friendships, so it's interesting to unpack why this fell so incredibly flat for me. I just didn't believe in the college friendships on any level,  and the insta-bonding with Lulu and Sydney felt forced.  To feel like there's a real friendship, I need to see the characters reference the same jokes/songs/movie quotes, or maybe just see the casual intimacy of ordering a friend's usual. These women shared almost no group memories, and the new friendships didn't feel like they were based on a connection.

This book was a real page turner! I couldn't wait to discover what each woman;s secrets were! The way the book was written was interesting and i loved how it played out.

This was a fun quick read that would be perfect for the beach. The characters are well fleshed-out and generally likable / relatable (with the exception of Emily, who is at times relatable, but also frustrating and a total Debbie Downer). I also liked how the author represented female friendships. It felt so true to life with the slight undertone of competitiveness / judgment that they were all radiating onto each other.

Took off a star because I didn't find the ending as satisfying as I would have liked, but would still recommend this as a fun beach read for anyone that likes suspense fiction.

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!