Ooo already the title and cover of the book drew me in at first glance! Definitely glad I was able to read this one! Go ahead and try it out.

I really liked this twist filled page turner! It's a thriller, so a fast read, and I can't really resist anything about cons and crime.

I thoroughly enjoyed the roller coaster ride of this page turner. A story of a mother and daughter trying to make ends meet by running cons. They get entangled with a wealthy family from old money and re-visit this scene 12 years later. Everything is not as it seems. Whose conning who? You’ll have to wait until the official release on 4/21/2020 to find out. This is definitely worth the time to read.

Thank you Random House and Netgalley for an advanced reader copy of this thriller in exchange for my honest opinion. This was really a fantastic read.

Thank you to Netgalley for the digital ARC of this book. This story was told from two different perspectives, which I always enjoy. There is Vanessa, the “wealthy” one and Nina the con artist. The best part of this book is when their stories come together.

"When you're documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You're never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment".

Con artist Nina has the ultimate con: to get back at those that wronged her many, many years ago. Vanessa is looking for new purpose, but still has the longing to love and more importantly, be loved by so many others around her. Their paths have only crossed once before, but this time their paths will cross in a dynamic, suspenseful, keep you guessing each page book.

I enjoyed how this book really captured the good, the bad, and the very ugly of social media. Showing all the hashtags used and realistic post descriptions really showed how society does bare their souls on social media. The instant gratification of "I am liked by many, loved by my followers" is something that is realistic and seeing Vanessa's struggle with being liked and adored without the "likes" was something people go through daily.

This book intrigued me from the jump. Nina was cool, calm, and calculated as she canvassed the first house in the first chapter. I wanted to get to know her better because she had that gravitating personality. She is why i started to really turn the pages.

I liked how there were two different perspectives, one of Nina's, and one of Vanessa's. You could see the different relationships and how they meant differently to each person (ex. Vanessa's mother. She would die for Vanessa, but was cold and dismissive towards NIna). It's like that saying, "There's three sides to a story, mine, yours, and the truth". Seeing both sides really helped change my perspective on what was going on and how I felt about others.

This book had a lot of twists and turns and they were great. I pride myself in guessing the "twists", but I will say there was one I did NOT see coming in this book. I loved it! This book is fairly long (about 400+ pages) but I felt as though it was only 200 with how quickly I was reading through the book.

Overall, I give this a 3.5 rating. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This will be featured on my blog: https://milesofpagescom.wordpress.com/ the week of April 20th. Also will post on instagram/milesofpages and GoodReads the same week.

Pretty Things was so well done. This thriller felt fresh and relevant to current times and is one that lingered in my mind after finishing. From the very first sentence I was utterly enthralled. I loved the contrast between the two points of view and thought there were some deep messages of classism, current society, and family dynamics (particularly the bonds between mothers and daughters) nestled within the pages of this thriller.

I live a couple hours away from the main location of the story in Lake Tahoe and thought this was such a fun element. Although it will always be one of my favorite places in the world, I may never look at Lake Tahoe quite the same. This book was perfectly layered and despite being a bit of a slow burn, it was nearly impossible to put down.

Thriller fans, do yourself a favor and grab your copy when it’s published on April 21st. It’s excellent, and the writing was top notch. You should definitely pre-order this one. When I finished all I could think was that I NEED to read more books by this author.

Thanks to netgalley for the ARC of Pretty Things by Janelle Brown. This book. Woooo-weeee. I think I spent the entire book muttering to myself, "whoa. I didn't expect that!" Strong character and plot development. Twists and turns throughout that by the time I finished late at night I was exhausted (in a good way). Put this on your to-read this.

We have a grafter conwoman, Nina Ross, having a chance for con of her lifetime, getting back at the family who scorned her. Not only for revenge, but also affording her mother’s cancer treatment bills, she needs money and her target is family’s shiny social media star Vanessa.

We have an Instagram Influencer(Vanessa) with admirers, followers swimming around her but she still surprisingly suffers from loneliness and abandonment. She needs real friends. Could it be her con woman also her friend?

And don’t forget, we have Irish boyfriend a.k.a partners in crime of Nina, named Lachlan. Can Nina truly trust him for helping her to stick to the plan?

Let the games begin. But be prepared to be fooled and be careful because somebody can pull the rug from under your feet. This book is layered with some many turnarounds and twists. Sometimes you think who is the bad guy who is the good guy?? The con artists we know or the victim? Sometimes the hunter can turn into a prey and prey can take his place.

Too many twists to count. This Thriller doesn’t disappoint

I received a free e-copy of Pretty Things by Janelle Brown from NetGalley for my honest review.

This book is a story about two women, Nina and Vanessa. Nina, who was raised by a single mother.
Life was never easy for them and money was always scarce. Vanessa was born into a family of old-money. Life was always an advantage for her. Their lives end up intertwined when Nina decides that Vanessa will be her next person to con.

A wonderful book of mystery and intrigue!

This is a slow burn saga of some very spoiled and unhappy people. Not much joy in this one. The book is almost 400 pages long yet this talented author kept me turning the pages just to see what these self absorbed characters scheme to do next.

The cast is a small one which I really like so I don’t become confused. And the personalities of each are vivid and strong. I challenge you to try and like any of them. I guess if I had to pick, it would be Benny.

The plot revolves around two women on opposite ends of the wealth spectrum. Nina was raised by a single mother, where the simple act of living was a continuous struggle. Beautiful Vanessa was born into a prominent old-money family and given every advantage.

Nina is a con artist, having learned this from her mother... such a wonderful talent to pass on to your offspring. Here’s Nina’s rule for stealing, “Only people who have too much, and only people who deserve it.” Of course that justifies everything!

With her art history degree, Nina targets expensive antiques that can be lifted without the rich suckers even noticing they’re gone.
But life throws curves, and now Nina's mother is at death’s door with cancer. She needs very expensive medicine to try and beat her disease. Nina develops a plan to steal $1 million in cash from a former boyfriend’s estate. Benny, the boyfriend of 12 years past, is now living in a mental institution. He mentioned the cash to her some 12 years ago when they were secret young lovers. Now she and new boyfriend Michael devise an intricate plan to get in the good graces of Vanessa, Benny’s sister who is now living in the old mansion. He said the cash was in his father’s safe all those years ago. Can it still be there?
At this point the complicated caper begins to unfold and get messy.

I finished the book at 4:08 am and felt a bit relieved to have these people out of my life. Oh, but I jest here. This is a great read!

You will enjoy disliking the double-crossing little double crossers!

Well written with rich and descriptive vocabulary.

This was my first experience with a Janelle Brown book. Thank you Netgally for this opportunity to add another fantastic author to my repertoire.

Pretty Things is a very good read, one that I think will be a bestseller. It’s good in the same way Gone Gone girl is good: a compellingly tale from two POVs about flawed but sometimes sympathetic characters who both use and are used by those around them., Desperation, love, friendship and revenge are the themes that drive this can’t-put-it-down story with unpredictable plot twists. It’s cleverly plotted, though a little long in places.
All that said, this wasn’t my cup of tea. Unlike pretty much everyone else, I also didn’t care for Gone Girl. I need at least one character I can like and relate to, even just a little. Watching one character after another make bad decisions makes me uncomfortable.and takes away my reading pleasure.
All that said, Janelle Brown has done a good job with this book; I predict Pretty Things is headed for success.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

OMG, Pretty Things was AMAZING guys! I love all kinds of mystery thrillers when I'm work.. which is weird to say it out loud but it works. This was a fun ass rollercoaster ride that had me on the edge of my seat until the very last page.

In it, we meet Nina and Lachlan. Nina has a once in a lifetime chance at revenge.. well, a con.. but I still considered it revenge. Mostly because this family, the Liebling's, did her dirty and I was all for her going out and getting even. Then with her partner in crime, Lachlan, how could things go wrong?

I was all for them and everything that happened between them. Even all the twists and turns throughout this book. I couldn't put it down because I just wanted to know what the heck was going to happen on the next page.

I'm honestly impressed by how I kept up with everything. I am the WORST detective when it comes to these kind of books. The worst. It's a fact and I'm never going to lie about it. Not going to lie, my head was definitely spinning and swirling around and around but I enjoyed it.

Overall, I loved this book. I definitely need another one by Janelle stat.

This book wasn’t what I expected. Holy hell it was sensational and thrilling.

The story is told from two points of view, Nina and Vanessa’s. They live completely different lives until they end up crossing paths and their lives are never the same. Secrets, lies and revenge fuel this story and will have you on the edge of your seat! The author’s writing is excellent. I was thoroughly engaged from beginning to end. Although the characters were all great in their own way, I think my favorite character is Nina. Her backstory resonated with me. I finished this book awhile ago but I needed time to process. This book blew me away! This is the first book by this author and it won’t be the last. I was pleasantly surprised and I highly recommend this book! I give this 5 stars.

This book had so, so many twists and turns. Seriously. It zigged and zagged all over the place which was so very engaging. It's sort of a slow burn, which is usually not my jam, but the character and plot development was so well done it worked. I was so curious where everything was going, I couldn't put it down. The POV's switched between Nina, the grifter and Vanessa the Instagram Celebrity, rich girl. I love how certain situations were covered by both POV's so you could get both perspectives. This is a great book, highly recommend.

**Copied review from Goodreads.com.

Rating: 3.1 / 5

My final thought on this, simple though it is, is that "I didn't really like it".

At the beginning, things seemed promising, compelling as the summary would suggest. The setup is great: a heist is being planned by Nina and her boyfriend, Lachlan, to rob millionairess Vanessa blind--well, not completely, but rob her of a high enough sum that it'd be tempting to anyone who has things like student loans, medical bills, and rent to pay. Shifting perspectives between Nina and Vanessa, we likewise get an interesting back-and-forth opportunity to get to know both of them intimately, and as such get different views of the same story and shared history.

However, things go downhill fast, and I can more or less split the book 50-50 on what's wrong in the first half that's off-putting, and what's wrong in the second half that's a complete turn-off--for me, at least.

In the first half, basically, ALL you've got is background and setup. Literally, the first 200 or so pages are just the backstories of Nina and Vanessa, and then some overlapping chapters wherein we get their minute thoughts of their first meeting, with notices of small things like their hair, outfits, teeth, whatever. And while this paints a very clear picture of what we can expect from each character and where they're coming from, it really dragged on for far too long to be enjoyable. If the author had cut this section down by even 50 pages (although I would just halve it to 100, to be honest), then it would've been more enjoyable. As it was, near the 160 mark or so I was just skimming to get it over with already and have something happen in the modern day rather than in the past.

And then, post-200, some action does finally happen, but the only way to sum it up is that "it's all wrong". A couple of "twists" do take place, some of which I didn't see something, but just because something is unexpected doesn't make it good. In this case, I think the author was relying far too much on the first half of her book to get you engaged with the characters and therefore compelled to care about what happens to them, so that whatever does end up happening in the second half, you'd be captivated by. Yeah...that was not my experience. Instead, I was just rolling my eyes at how drastic and dramatic things ended up being in a direction that really didn't suit the heist setup that the summary promises. I get why things end up happening the way they do, but at the same time I don't like how they end up happening, and really wished that the author had taken a different direction on things. From the whole Nina-Lachlan-Vanessa triangle setup, I expected something to be in close quarters during a snowstorm, something like No Exit, where the tensions are high but there's nowhere you can go to escape them. Unfortunately, the author doesn't use the Lake Tahoe location to its full advantage, specifically because she has Nina going back and forth to Los Angeles easily. So...snowstorm is useless, in other words?

All in all, this is a book that had promise, but ultimately turns out to be something just full of skim-worthy parts. Not exactly the kind of things a reader would appreciate in a novel, yeah?

So, read it if you think you'd like it, but myself, I think it's too shallow and badly-planned for me to really like it. A partial rating for good writing and a could-have-been-better setup. Credit given where credit is due, after all.

Nina is raised by her mother who is a grifter. She ends up living a short time in Lake Tahoe where her mother is using her wiles while working in a casino in the area. Nina meets and falls for a boy that happens to live at Stonehaven. Nina and the boy are no longer allowed to see each other after the father finds them in the caretakers cottage. Nina and her mother move away. Fast forward into the future and Nina is forced to take up her mother's grifting profession and she ends up back at Stonehaven. This book was extremely well written and I love that it goes back and forth between Nina and the sister of her past love, Vanessa. The characters are well written and I definitely will be recommending this book to others. There is such a great story and I love the mix of genres in this book.

𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐲 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐉𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧. Book 42 of 2020. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the E-ARC. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
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Nina and Lachlan have thought of the perfect con victim - Vanessa, an heiress and Instagram fashion influencer who is taking a break at her remote family mansion. The con doesn’t go exactly as planned, as history and truth emerges. ⁣
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A lot of suspense novels these days are about the suburbs and housewife’s. This one as a bit different. We have two women, from completely different backgrounds and walks of life. The inter-character dynamics were really interesting. I loved the change in POV and thought it worked really well. Some events are repeated, but from different perspectives which really gives you an inside feel for the action. ⁣
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All in all, I thought this ended up being another great February, galentines read. The two women aren’t friends, but this is certainly a testament to girl-power and empowering yourself. ⁣
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“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘸𝘰 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵.” ⁣
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I'm sure you've read a book where you read a certain scene and you mouth just drops open and you look around and say, "Oh my God, what??" This book had not one, not two, but several moments like that for me. Just when you think you've got the plot figured out, Ms. Brown yanks the carpet out from under your feet. The amazing part is that she does it so very well.

Pretty Things is told from the perspective of Nina and Vanessa. These two women are as different as night and day. Nina is a con artist raised by a con artist mother while Vanessa is born into a family of wealth and privilege. They meet briefly while Nina is a teen and Vanessa is a college student due to Nina's friendship with Benny, Vanessa's brother. Now, years later they meet again as Nina is desperate for one last con to help her mother and then go legit. She thinks Vanessa will be the perfect mark.

The book intertwines flashbacks as well as the perspectives of the two women. There are a few scenes that are told from each woman's point of view. Strangely enough it works. I am not going to say that I loved either character because they are both deeply flawed. At different points you feel sad for them, you root for them, you care for them, and you even hates them.

Setting details are amazing. I could picture the landscape, picture the mansions, and picture the lake. The descriptions almost make me want to take a trip to Lake Tahoe and take a look around. If a writer has you seeing the story as a movie inside of your head then she's doing an excellent job. This was excellent.

The story shows you that whether you are rich or broke, you all have problems. No one is what they seem in this book and they tell lies upon lies upon lies to each other and themselves. In the end, could the two women bond and put their past aside?

The only thing that I wished for more in this book was that I wanted to see more of Benny. He's very troubled but also funny and he means so much to both women that it was a shame that he wasn't more present in the book.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I recommend it to anyone who loves a good thriller. The pacing is good and the story is compelling. I suggest you pre-order a copy so you don't miss out!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy of this book. I sincerely hope that Ms. Brown continues writing and that I'll be able to review her next piece of work.

OBSESSED.

This was such a great read and a mix of all my favorite things! Social Media + Wealth + a good con! Contrary to other reviews, I did not find this book predictable at all. I love the way the story and characters evolved.

Now I have an overwhelming feeling to visit Lake Tahoe. ;)

Thank you so much for this ARC!

Nina’s mom was always a con artist. Which made for an interesting upbringing in Las Vegas where she worked at a casino. There was that bright, shining moment in high school, when Nina and her mom moved to Tahoe, where Nina attended a private school and fell in love with Benny, a boy who was also a bit of an outcast, but from a rich family.
But, as with most of Nina’s life, that bright shining moment was cut short and she and her mom found themselves slinking back to Vegas. Fast forward maybe 10 years? Nina pulled herself up by her bootstraps to graduated from a reputable university and get a job. A low paying job. Because while still worth the hard work, college degrees are a dime a dozen.
When her mom gets sick, Nina returns home to help. And it isn’t long before she finds herself engulfed in her mother’s con world with her ruggedly handsome friend, Lachlan. So, while she escaped it once, it became her world as she struggles to pay her mother’s medical bills.
So, when a brilliant con plan has the potential to pay for a pricey treatment, and possibly avenge some of that hurt from Nina’s adolescence, she pounces on it. She and Lachlan enter the world of Tahoe as Ashley and Michael.
This one took me a while to get into, but once I was there, the pages starting flying by. The book is told from Nina and Vanessa’s point of view, and it’s interesting to see their different sides of the same scenes. I ended up loving this one. Check it out for sure!
Special thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review. This one is out April 21. Pre-order your copy.

My review will be posted on my blog, Women in Trouble Book Blog on March 24, 2020.