💯Whether you're a fan of The Great Gatsby or not, this is a must-read! This provocative retelling, from the viewpoint of the ladies in Gatsby's inner circle, is as unsettling as it is irresistible. And I can tell you from personal experience that you needn't have read the classic to be entertained by this novel. Although I've always wanted to read the original, I never quite got around to it. Now, having read this intoxicating backstory, I'm going to have to pick it up for sure!

✍️Jillian Cantor's writing is crisp and exciting. There was never a dull moment, and I almost feel that not knowing who was responsible for Gatsby's demise made this novel even more compelling! The characters were all very well-fleshed-out, aside from a couple of the more minor characters, and the setting is incredibly vivid. The women felt like old friends to me by story's end...

This novel speaks to the limited options women had back in the 1920s, and to the fact that they were often played like "Beautiful Little Fools" by the men in their lives. And of course, who wouldn't want to pick up a novel with a cover and title like this one?! 😍Just gorgeous...

Many thanks to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for gifting me with this e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

⚠️TW: Infidelity, domestic violence, and murder

For more of my reviews, please check out my blog at https://mamasgottaread.blogspot.com or follow me on Instagram @mamasgottaread.

So good. So clever. A retelling of The Great Gatsby, but from the point of view of the women of the original novel: Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle and Catherine, as well the perspective of a detective looking into Gatsby's murder for reasons of his own. This is the second book I have read by this author and once again I am impressed with the way she is able to put a completely new, fresh spin on a story we think we already know.

NOTE: Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was my second Great Gatsby retelling of the year. And I absolutely enjoyed every page. Beautiful Little Fools expounds on the female characters of the story. Breathing interesting and unique life into each one.

Watching the story unfold from their points of views changes the story and keeps it from feeling repetitive. It is fast paced and the mystery keeps you on your toes for the end. While I was not surprised by the outcome, it was still a wonderful journey to reach it. Leaving me with a far more satisfying experience than the original book.

A beautiful retelling of the story of Great Gatsby and the women surrounding him, all thrown together during the Roaring Twenties, throughout the fight of the suffragettes and the echo of the Great War. Dramatic and glamorous!

A first from this author and wow.. Just WOW!

From start to finish this book hooked me. It's a remake of THE GREAT GATSBY but with the women at the forefront. Each has their story and it's fascinating from start to finish. This one will keep you turning the pages and actually I could picture these women as they would be in a new movie based on this book.

Set in 1922. A mystery surrounds this one. A who shot J. G. A story about women's rights. It has a bit of it all going on.

This was a bit hard to review as I would never want to give anything away. Suffice it to say this book was fantastic. A page turner. A historical, women's fiction. A great adaptation of the original Gatsby. A new perspective on a great book.

I enjoyed this one immensely.

Thank you #NetGalley, #JillianCantor, #HarperPerennial for this ARC. This is my own true thoughts about this book.

5/5 stars and a very high recommendation.

Let me first say that The Great Gatsby is my favorite work of American literature, so I was initially skeptical about this book. Was the author trying to recreate Gatsby in her own image, or would the book be derivative? I was pleasantly surprised. Obviously, the author is not F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the novel lacks the subtlety of the original. However, by slightly turning the lens to focus on the female characters, Jillian Cantor creates an interesting work of literature which is entirely plausible given that the idolatry of Gatsby found in The Great Gatsby is entirely created by Nick Carraway., while Fitzgerald drops hints that Gatsby is not all that he seems. Retelling the tale from the perspective of the female characters is altogether new and plausible, although the voices of the women are not entirely distinct, and they are not all that complex or interesting as characters. They all have hearts of gold, but where is their darkness too? No one is all good or all bad, and it is a shame that this re-write demonizes the male characters while the women are uniformly good. Overall, however, the novel was entertaining. 4.0 out of 5.0 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you partner @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial @jilliancantor for a copy of #BeautifulLittleFools.

In my 20s, I was absolutely *obsessed* with F. Scott Fitz. The glamour, the gin, Gatsby himself. I remember in New York, back in the early aughts, they would hold these fancy “tea” parties on Governor’s Island and you would dress in your 1920’s best and you would have to take a boat to get there. What is the millennial obsession with the roaring 20’s? Anyway, what a time to be alive! 🍸

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is the Gatsby retelling I didn’t know I needed! Cantor does such a wonderful job in truly showing Gatsby’s toxicity - like he really bought a house across from Daisy?! In this era of Kanye stalking Kim, this isn’t romantic - it’s downright scary!

The main focus of this book, though, is the women. Daisy, JORDAN WHO I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, Catherine, and Myrtle 😭.

These women with hopes and dreams, trying to live in a time when you couldn’t even go out to dinner without a male escort.

This book gives these characters depth, which in Fitzgerald’s Gatsby are mere props.

I fucking loved it.

“I always thought it was us women who were the fools,” I whispered. “But I was wrong, it’s been the men all along, hasn’t it?” - Daisy Buchanan

Inspired by @cait.reads.and.drinks and her book & drink pairings - I paired Beautiful Little Fools with a SLOE GIN FIZZ.

Beautiful Little Fools is an immersive story into the lives of the women who feature in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beloved classic, The Great Gatsby. The novel jumps around in time and revolves around solving the murder of Jay Gatsby while setting the story of what lead up to his untimely demise. We learn about the backstories of Daisy, Jordan, Katherine, and Myrtle. The detective investigating Gatsby’s death also plays a part. I really liked the perspectives of each character and how Cantor imagined their lives. Though I thought it was well done, I had an issue really connecting to the characters. I also found that to be the case when I read The Great Gatsby. Though it’s so skillfully written and executed, I feel a lack of connection to the characters. I enjoyed living in this immersive world of the early 20th century reliving the lives of familiar characters.

Thank you Harper Perennial and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was skeptical about yet another retelling of The Great Gatsby, after a rare recent DNF of The Chosen and the Beautiful, told from Jordan Baker's point of view. Surprising they were released so close together - though while based on the same source material. they are two very different books. I need not have worried about this one -while also primarily from the female point of view - Daisy Fay Buchanan and Jordan mainly, as well as Catherine, the sister of ill-fated Myrtle (was she a character In Gatsy? Can't recall..), along with Detective Frank Charles who has been hired by a mobster to investigate Jay Gatsby's murder (spoiler for TGG, though is revealed in the first pages of this novel). The murder has been pinned on George Wilson, Myrtle's husband, who in a fit of rage and jealously has shot Gatsby, then himself, giving the police a neat conclusion. Detective Charles isn't so sure, having found a diamond hairpin in the bushes at the scene.

Told from alternating points of view, while it does get a little repetitive at times, overall Beautiful Little Fools is a quick-moving whodunnit. While it's been many years since I last read Gatsby, it makes for a much more entertaining read to have some familiarity with it, to see the way Cantor really effectively fill in the blanks for these characters, though could conceivably be almost as good as a standalone. It was not only fascinating to experience the events that led up to, and give plausible context to the action we see in TGG, but also a glimpse of what becomes of the characters after the tragic summer in East and West Egg ends.

I have been intending to do a re-read of Gatsby for a while, and this book really lights a fire to do so sooner than later. I'm stingy with 5 stars, but a solid 4.5, rounded down.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this book. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite classics, and I think this made me love it even more.

In this novel, we get to explore the lives of the women in the story - Daisy, Jordan Baker, and Catherine. Getting their perspectives gives the story so much more depth. People that seemed unlikeable in the original become sympathetic characters. The author puts a feminist spin on the story, and we get a much more realistic view of Jay Gatsby, who gets presented in a very negative light, but it feels completely real and natural to the story. To be fair, I always felt that the majority of the cast of characters in the original story were presented in a pretty negative light, but somehow Gatsby comes off as being a hopeless romantic. I appreciate what the author did in this story, showing how powerless women often were and how men, particularly wealthy men, just assume they can get whatever they want, be it materialistic things or people.

I also enjoyed that the author gave us a bit of a murder mystery, asking the question, "Who really killed Jay Gatsby?" What felt very cut and dry in the original novel, again, get's flipped on its head in this version of the story. I felt it was a natural conclusion that made complete sense in the scope of the story.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this take on Gatsby and I am desperate to read everything Jillian Cantor has written.

This was such a great rewrite of Gatsby! I loved Daisy’s point of view. I ended wanting to re-read Gatsby, or at least watch the Leo movie. The details from the 1900s were so well written that I had no trouble imagining myself there in Kentucky in 1917! There are so many details from the story yet enough to make this a brand new story.

I received an advanced copy. All thoughts are my own.

Beautiful Little Fools is a twisting reimagining of the women in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Jillian Cantor brings life to the characters we love in a fresh and innovative way. The writing seamlessly merges the old and new in a perfect blend of story.
This was a pleasure to read and I highly recommend it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Gatsby cannot be brought back no matter how hard you try! Jillian Cantor did try, however, as hard as she tried there is only one Fitzgerald, one Gatsby and that's it!! My thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A sweltering August day, a stunning estate, and a crystalline pool, its pellucid water tinged red by Jay Gatsby’s blood. Shot once and now dead. We all know this is how The Great Gatsby ends but in Jillian Cantor’s Beautiful Little Fools, it’s just the beginning. Although the police have closed the case, Detective Frank Charles has been hired by an old friend of Gatsby’s to find out if a grieving husband was the real killer. For this, he goes to the three women, all of whom knew Gatsby better than they claimed.

Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker are known to readers from the original tale, but the third woman, Catherine McCoy, gets only the smallest mention in that book. She’s Myrtle Wilson’s sister, who lives in NYC. Myrtle is Tom Buchanan’s mistress and she ends up just as dead from a hit and run in Beautiful Little Fools as she did in Gatsby. But the deaths are the only resemblance to the original. Cantor deliciously crafts a magic eye portrait (remember those?) by pulling background figures to the foreground and generating an entirely different picture. Now, it is Daisy, Jordan, and Catherine who individually narrate the novel, each from their perspective. And the story they tell to the detective doesn’t quite add up, but he can’t relax his eye or his mind enough to see the big picture.

Cantor fleshes out the women’s lives, pumping blood into what were paper dolls in Gatsby. Not that she turns them into heroines. She just brings them alive, with their own secrets and sorrows, and each with a very real connection to Jay Gatsby. In doing so, she illustrates the issues of control and power for women in the 1920s. They’re something Daisy, Jordan, and Catherine all want, but while they may appear to be living with some semblance of one or the other, it’s clear it’s an illusion being granted to them by the men around them.

Sometimes, I felt like a prop in my own life.

At the end of last year, I read The Chosen and the Beautiful, a fantastical re-interpretation of The Great Gatsby so was curious to see where another author would take this classic tale. Cantor did not disappoint with a uniquely twisted, fast-paced version of what happened that long ago summer. I didn’t always care for the writing, but Cantor’s imagination made me feel as if Beautiful Little Fools would be a wonderful teaching tool alongside The Great Gatsby, if only to illustrate how each writer’s perspective can completely change the same novel. This is a marvelous reincarnation of a traditional tale of love and longing, but told through the eyes of its women.

Beautiful Little Fools takes place in the immediate aftermath of The Great Gatsby, with flashbacks to the lives of Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Catherine (Myrtle Wilson's sister) in the years leading up to Jay Gatsby's arrival in New York.

The Great Gatsby is perhaps my favorite novel. I've read it many times over since discovering it in my early teens. As soon as I heard about this book, I was eager to read it.

This was a really interesting read. There were some surprises with Jordan and Daisy, but I felt their characters were true to the way they were presented in The Great Gatsby. Catherine wasn't seen as much in The Great Gatsby, so was more of a new character for me.

The book is told from the alternating viewpoints of Daisy, Jordan, Catherine, and the detective who is investigating Gatsby's death. It moves back and forth in time from World War I to 1923. The period details and setting is perfect. The author does a good job at delineating very different characters and personalities.

I'm still thinking about this book after finishing it, which is probably a good thing. I would recommend Beautiful Little Fools for fans of The Great Gatsby, and readers of historical fiction.

I listened to this one as an audiobook and read the ARC and I walked away really enjoying this feminist twist on THE GREAT GATSBY. I love the whodunit murder mystery vibe we have going on in this one as we figure out who really killed Jay Gatsby: Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker or Catherine McCoy (i.e., Myrtle Wilson's sister). We follow each of these ladies before, during and after the classic American story, and we find a world where women must navigate society's expectations and the desires of their own hearts. We see new sides of Daisy and Jordan that I really loved and what I felt gave them more depth and agency than they had in the original story. I particularly enjoyed the reassessment of Daisy and Gatsby's relationship and felt that it was a really compelling take on what is actually yet another iteration of a man taking what he wants from a woman regardless of their wishes. I also loved seeing more depth in Myrtle's character with Catherine's POV. Among the glitz and glamour of the Roaring Twenties is another side where women and their ambitions or dreams are sacrificed for those of men, and how three women are able to make a way for themselves in the midst of it. BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOLS is a wonderful reimagining of this classic American novel and is well-worth the read!

In Jillian Cantor's latest novel, Beautiful Little Fools we return to the Jazz Age and the world first created by literary great, F. Scott Fitzgerald. While the original novel pointed to George Wilson as the culprit in Jay Gatsby's death, Cantor's novel tells the story from the perspective of the three women in his life, Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Catherine McCoy. 

The story starts on the eve of Gatsby's death where we are given a glimpse at who might have killed him before we journey back several years to when Daisy wasn't a Buchanan yet, Jordan was a rising golf pro and Catherine had just moved to New York City and reconnected with her sister Mrytle who is struggling in an unhappy marriage and dreams of meeting a rich man who can rescue her.

Cantor recreates the world so perfectly, that I have to think that Fitzgerald would appreciate her reveal on just who killed Jay Gatsby and as someone who enjoyed the novel when it was required reading in school and has watched every feature film based on the book from 1974 movie starring Mia Farrow and Robert Redford to Baz Luhrmann's colorful re-imagining of the classic tale starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

I saw the blurb for Beautiful Little Fools by Jillian Cantor and couldn’t resist – a retelling of The Great Gatsby from the women’s perspective. The original story is familiar to me both from the book and the movies. It’s a beautiful classic, of course, but it’s also vaguely unsatisfying, possibly because all the characters are so dissatisfied.

Beautiful Little Fools does away with Nick Carraway’s narration, turning him into a very peripheral character. Instead, we get a deep dive into the hearts of the female protagonists, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker. A third woman, Catherine McCoy, a minor character in the original, is now also a main character — a third woman’s voice. Catherine is the sister of Myrtle (the woman who is tragically killed in The Great Gatsby.) The novel alternates among the three points of view to show what truly led up to the events of Gatsby, and (equally riveting) what happened after.

A fourth viewpoint character, Detective Frank Charles, is the one decent man in the whole book. He’s attempting to solve the mystery of who really killed Jay Gatsby, even though the police have closed the case as a murder-suicide. His digging for truth is the impetus for the story.

This is a murder mystery embedded in multiple love stories. Are the characters still dissatisfied? Yes. A happily-ever-after ending would not have been true to the original. But the loves in this book — the loves of the women — are far deeper and truer than those in Gatsby, which dealt more with obsession and male-female power dynamics than love.

I tried to imagine if this book could stand alone for those who haven’t read or seen the original, but it’s impossible for me to come to this book “naive.” I expect it will still be absorbing for those who don’t know the Gatsby story. It would certainly make me want to read the original. It might be fun for someone unaware of the plot of The Great Gatsby to read this first and then compare. Either way, this book is not to be missed.

First, the cover is GORGEOUS.

Second, and more important, I loved the story. Three women get to know Jay Gatsby in several ways - each with their own secrets. Jay ends up dead, and surely one of these three women knows more than they are letting on, but you learn just how deeply these three women are connected as the story unfolds. Each woman tells her side of the story, but it is done in a way that is easy to follow.

Jay is no saint, but did he deserve to die? Only after hearing all three women's information can you really decide .for yourself.

I definitely got caught up in the story and had to find out how it ended! It's set in WW2 times, and is a fun escape.

It's not easy to tackle a reimagining of a classic, which in this case is The Great Gatsby. It was fascinating to be involved with the story from the point of view of three women instead -- Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Catherine McCoy. The book expands on The Great Gatsby by providing the history leading up to the summer of Gatsby's murder, then the investigation, and then finally more of what happened on East Egg. Readers are exposed to the limited freedom and possibilities women had in the 1920s, as they were not as free to live their lives as they wished. Cantor does a fantastic job of creating twists and turns along the way in the novel and keeps the mystery of the "whodunnit" fresh throughout. It's an engaging read and remains true to the original story while providing an interesting reimagined perspective. Highly recommend!