Thanks NetGalley for the preview!

It was a nice setting but too much drama crammed in to each scene. Also the weird names killed it for me. I really struggled with this one.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

I absolutely loved this book! It was such a captivating read! I couldn’t stop reading! I loved the characters and the story! Highly recommend!

The publisher provided this ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


"Convention doesn’t carry much weight in Alder Creek. It doesn’t in Amoris Westmore’s family either. Daughter of a massage therapist and a pothead artist, inheritor of her grandmother’s vinyl collection, and blissfully entering her senior year in high school, Amoris never wants to leave her progressive hometown. Why should she?

Everything changes when Jamison Rush moves in next door. Jamison was Amoris’s first crush, and their last goodbye still stings. But Jamison stirs more than bittersweet memories. One of the few Black students in Alder Creek, Jamison sees Amoris’s idyllic town through different eyes. He encourages Amoris to look a little closer, too. When Jamison discovers a racist mural at Alder Creek High, Amoris’s worldview is turned upside down."

I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, but there were some subjects that you must be careful of when touching them; otherwise, it'll feel flat and make your speech sound empty. Also, the execution was all over the place, the resolution was a bit fast-paced, and I couldn't care for the others despite really liking the male character. Not an enjoyable read for me, I'm afraid.

young love story about breaking painful legacies by the author of The Upside of Falling Down.

Convention doesn’t carry much weight in Alder Creek. It doesn’t in Amoris Westmore’s family either. Daughter of a massage therapist and a pothead artist, inheritor of her grandmother’s vinyl collection, and blissfully entering her senior year in high school, Amoris never wants to leave her progressive hometown. Why should she?

Everything changes when Jamison Rush moves in next door. Jamison was Amoris’s first crush, and their last goodbye still stings. But Jamison stirs more than bittersweet memories. One of the few Black students in Alder Creek, Jamison sees Amoris’s idyllic town through different eyes. He encourages Amoris to look a little closer, too. When Jamison discovers a racist mural at Alder Creek High, Amoris’s worldview is turned upside down.

Now Amoris must decide where she stands and whom she stands by, threatening her love for the boy who stole her heart years ago. Maybe Alder Creek isn’t the town Amoris thinks it is. She’s certainly no longer the girl she used to be.

It's a so-so book...still I really want to enjoy it till the end but it felt flat for me.
Thanks to Netgalley and publishers for the ARC!

one of the only good things in this book is the male lead. like, he was honestly such a good guy and was in this for all the right reasons, and all around, a really good and sweet guy. like, i think him being a writer added some depth into his character and did wonders for him. and like, he part of the friendship it was really good to see him make this friendship the thing that it was.

but, as for the female lead, i didn't like her. like, i feel like all she did was mess up every single friendship that she was sort of something i didn't like. i mean, she does have some strength and that she is really good in some moments, but i think for the most part she was really someone i didn't like. and i also think that she was just so blind with how they always talked about about the issues in the town for her friend, and i think it is completely crazy that she never picked up on it since it was right in front of her face, yet she never said anything.

i also think there was just so many questions in this book, like, i think there was so many questions about how it all worked and how bad this town actually was, like they just brought it up, but never really explained it, which got to be kind of annoying after awhile. and just that the female mc never grew a brain and never understood how her life is different then the male mc.

This book was way different than I expected it to be and I’m not sure how I felt about it. It wasn’t bad in any sense of the word but I don’t think it was for me? I was never able to connect to the characters in the way I wanted so I just always felt outside of the story.

Thank You to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with this ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Only the Pretty Lies, was an intriguing book with many important messages and thoughtful portrayals of relevant issues many people face in their young life. Crane creates a heart-warming story and attempts to touch on topics such as white privilege, racism, and homophobia.

One of the biggest positive qualities of the book is the main protagonist, which at first glance appears very naïve and oblivious about a lot of the issues discussed in the book. Throughout the book the audience is able to watch her grow and become her own kind of person.

A lot of the characters had interesting qualities that set them apart from the group, however, this wasn’t the case for most of them. A number of the characters felt underdeveloped, and could have been explored more or given some redeeming qualities.

At the end it felt like there was more to unpack and at certain parts it seemed like the story was moving on too fast. There were many issues left unresolved; what I believed caused this issue was the fact that Crane attempted to tackle too many things at once and as a result she was unable to deliver a satisfying result.

Overall, this book had great potential, and it was written with good intentions. There’s no doubt that the writer attempt to touch on some important issues, but in the end there was something missing.

3.5 Stars.

Oh my gosh
This was so good!!
I totally forgot that I had this book downloaded and I am SO glad that I finally got to it!
this was soooo sad but also so heartwarming and so cute. I loved it so much!
This was a pretty fast-paced contemporary and I loved the writing style.
I'd totally recommend this!

Only the Pretty Lies by Rebekah Crane is hard for me to rate because it was much heavier than I thought it would be. I almost gave up at some point because the MC was a bit annoying but I'm glad I made it through. It's a coming of age story about love, family and friendship that tackles racism. Amoris and Jamieson's story is not your typical YA love story, which is refreshing in a way. It wasn't my favorite but I'm happy to have read it.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the free ebook copy in exchange of a honest review.

I really liked the writing style of Rebekah Crane and how the protagonist starts being completely oblivious to all the aggressions she was doing or supporting without realizing and then continues to grow from them to became a better and more educated person.


My review is now published on goodreads too.

This was a thought-provoking contemporary read which explored important and relevant issues such as racism, homophobia and white privilege. It was fast paced and a quick read, however this impacted on the author's ability to effectively unpack the issues so I was left wanting more from the story. more like a 2.75

This was a thought-provoking contemporary read which explored important and relevant issues such as racism, homophobia and white privilege. It was fast paced and a quick read, however this impacted on the author's ability to effectively unpack the issues so I was left wanting more from the story.

This book is really good!
This book has funny moments too which made for a good read.
I recommend this book because the character was relatable at times and the book was interesting.

This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


Wow, when I started this book I thought it was going to be just a typical romance novel but man I was pleasantly surprised. This story was a beautiful example of love, struggle, racism, bigotry, and white privilege. It was amazing watching our main heroine Amoris grow from a naive teenage girl who only worried about how things effected her into a more self aware, compassionate, strong woman. The relationship between her and Jamison was adorable, I loved the friends aspect with the playfulness and the mutual pining. It was amazing watching them grow together, her realizing her misgivings when it came to the way Jamison felt and how he was treated differently for being black and leaning to stand up for what’s right. Ugh, I just all around loved this story. p.s. we DISLIKE 👎🏻 Ellis, all around as a character, she was the definition of white privilege, self pitying, self serving teenage girl, I wanted to punch her every-time she opened her mouth. But overall, I loved this book!

thank you netgalley for providing an arc of this book.

while the main protagonist of this novel is so promising as a character, this book fell flat for me. it was extremely hard to get into. i found it boring, despite the strong message the book gives you and the growth of the characters.

3 stars!

This wasn't an enjoyable read. The entire time, I wanted to be done with it. Which is quite the accomplishment considering this is only 275 pages.

I think most of my problems actually stemmed from the length. So many things are underdeveloped. This book tried to tackle so many issues (racism, homophobia) and neither of them is done particularly well. Instead of feeling like a thoughtful commentary on these issues, this book felt like it just shoved them in.

I think the clearest example of this is the mural. We're told its racist because there is a slave ship present in it. I really wanted more from this. Who had painted it? What made it so clear this was in fact a slave ship? Instead of addressing these questions, this book simply painted the mural as racist, and left it there. In the author's note, it was stated that this was based on an event at the author's daughter's school, so I was expecting more detail. It wasn't a big problem, but I felt like it really portrayed how underdeveloped this book was.

I also hated all of the characters. Ellis was a total bitch, and didnt have a single redeeming quality. Zach was a pushover, and he shouldve dropped Amoris immediately. I honestly dont remember a single personality trait of Jamison's, so he's not getting mentioned. And Amoris was just preachy. The relationships between this group were even more confusing, so I'm not even going to try and tackle them.

Finally, the dialogue in this just felt over the top. There were several conversations featuring the school counselor in which I just had to put the book down. They were the stereotypical pretentious nonsense every YA book includes when it's trying to be quirky and different.

I feel like this book's message is good, and its trying to do good things, it just missed the mark. I understand that I can't relate to the problems the characters face, but my problems stemmed from the actual writing style, not just the content.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book forces the ignorant reader to learn about microagressions. I get what the author was trying to do with this book but it felt a little back-handed. It felt uncomfortable catering to white people what's right and wrong, and the MC was trying too hard to appear sympathetic. I guess it felt fake.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Only The Pretty Lies in exchange for an honest review.

My biggest praise of Only The Pretty Lies is probably how dynamic the protagonist is. Crane attempts to educate the reader by having the protagonist start off incredibly oblivious of all the microaggressions she either causes or accidentally supports in her day to day life so she can deconstruct them for the reader while the protagonist does the same deconstructions. I loved the narrative style though I few times it does seem very in-your-face self important. I'm still a tad unsure how I feel about the execution of the anti-racist message at this book's heart because of how occasionally cartoonish it felt in what it was preaching but I think that was pretty much inevitable with the narrative style.

Brief note I wanted to include in case someone's reading this before the book gets printed: most style guides don't capitalize the W is White since being Black is a culturally defining experience but being white is not.