I actually read this one a couple months ago and it is still banging around in my head. Mia is a librarian who works with her best friend on the third floor. She feels she is invisible but really she is not. She is seen by a few. There is the man on the second floor (we never find our about him), the obnoxious co-worker on the first floor who ultimately gets her promotion but wants her to do his job, and her boss who knows her strengths and cheers her on. When she starts getting notes and then packages with clothes and then murders start happening what and who is doing them? Twisty, you bet. Chilling, oh yeah! Do I want more? Please!

Ah, the humorous Papillion small town shenanigans continue in Bayou Beloved. Lexi Blake's wonderful sense of humor made this book a fabulously fun book to read. How family dynamics skew our emotions and interactions with not only our family members but those around us play a significant role in this romance. Courtroom antics, a judge who just wants to go fishing, snobbery and elitist attitudes and senior citizen exhibitionists are but a few of the components in this story. Heck, even Brian the Bandit and his thieving raccoons make another appearance.

Oh how I love Jayna Cardet and Quaid Havery! Their verbal sparring and innuendoes have Papillion's gossip central so rife with titillating bits about them it is like a runaway train. Jayna thought she'd left Papillion behind yet here she is, a disgraced big city attorney, facing her former high school crush and litigating over a cut down tree. Not only did Quaid not recognize his high school French tutor, he didn't remember her name. Oops! Just when Jayna thought her life couldn't get any worse....well it does. Fortunately Quaid comes to the rescue and they end up forming a short term partnership that benefits them both. However, although she doesn't plan on staying. He doesn’t plan on letting her go.

Jones has a really solid premise, and clearly understand what makes a thriller worthwhile. I just found this to be a bit cliché. The writing didn't feel exciting and some of the dialogue was just so unbelievable. This also moves incredibly slow, and the payoff ultimately just isn't worth it.

Pacing was off, storyline didn’t hold my attention, characters weren’t memorable. DNFd it. Not for me. But I’d still recommend you give it a shot if you like thrillers.

Mia had always felt invisible to others, until she meets Adam who wants to bring her out of her shell. Adam will do anything, even kill.

Knowing this was about a stalker, I was expecting some action and tense moments. There were a few tense moments, but other the few I felt like i was waiting for it to get going. It didn’t unravel at a pace that left me on the edge of my seat, which I would expect from the plot. It was an interesting read character wise but I could have done with a little more thrill.

“Any minute now I am certain I will be dead. This is always where the story ends. This was always going to be my ending”.

You Look Beautiful Tonight comes out 6/1.

I came close to giving up on this book several times. At 88 chapters, this one is a long read. It should have been a lot shorter, considering that precious little is happening. There is a lot of unnecessary repetition.

I generally have a thing for books set in libraries, but here no amount of convincing on Mia’s part could make the Nashville Library interesting for me.

After a confusing opening in the present time, in which the narrator thinks they’ve committed some crime, the story takes us back in time two months ago.

Mia Anderson has always been ignored, by her mother, when she was a child, and by everyone now. The only two people who see her are best friend Jess Pierce, a rich beautiful columnist, and Jack, her best friend at the library, where she works.

When Jess opens accounts for herself and Mia on a dating site, Mia expects to be ignored. But she begins to get messages from a good-looking civil engineer called Adam Roth. She keeps his existence a secret from the two Js in her life.

Meanwhile, Mia’s father has invented a solar light that can revolutionise the lighting industry. But her mom and dad have secrets from each other, and Mia suspects that one of them is cheating on the other.


The story is written in the 1st person present tense PoV of Mia.
I liked Mia at the beginning, but the story didn’t live up to the intrigue that the premise suggested. She keeps saying the same thing, telling us that being unseen is both painful and comfortable for her. That’s when she began to grate on my nerves. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind whether she wanted to be seen or ignored.
It’s a thriller, but it’s only at the 50 percent mark that any danger appeared on Mia’s horizon, and even then the danger was uninteresting. Prior to that, it seemed to be a romance.

Better editing was required. Mia tells us twice that Jess’ parents were killed in a car accident. One thing that I found really annoying was how people don’t leave rooms in this book; they depart. People don’t turn around; they rotate.

The chapters take us back and forth between the present and the past. But the timeline isn’t updated and the author fails to tell us when the chapters in the past catch up with the present.

Also, the story should have remained in the past and moved on chronologically to the present. The teaser relating to the present failed to clock in the required intrigue.

The constant reference to a particular letter opener, which might be a bookmark and might also be a weapon, was annoying.

In Chapter 62, Mia tells us she doesn’t know how she forgot that Jack is a comic geek. Pretty convenient way of introducing a detail which had never been mentioned before.

In the same vein, she tells us that she's always ordering things from Amazon. She tells us this only when she finds a gift on her doorstep long after the halfway mark.

I didn’t like any of the characters. Mia, Jess, Jack, Adam; they were all unimpressive and flat. Mia had no character arc to speak of, although she claimed she had changed.

There was only one quote that stood out for me. Always the “honey” endearment when she wants something, as if years of salt can be removed by sugar.

The book might be a trigger for child sexual abuse.

I did not see this coming at all! I like the background info you got on each character so you really felt like you knew each person while reading the book. The ultimate twist was a little outlandish, but the mystery of it all kept me turning the pages to figure out who was who. Great, quick read.

This book was an alright thriller! I did enjoy the read overall.
It was a little slow to my taste, I feel like there was a lot of unnecessary, repeated details that made it even slower. I found the twist not very believable.
I’m sure a lot of people will probably enjoy it more than I did!
Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for letting me read an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5 ⭐️
Librarian Mia loves a lot about her life, especially her best friends Jess and Jack. However, she often feels invisible. That changes one day when she meets someone on a dating app. Adam starts telling her how to live her life to not be invisible anymore. Soon though, Mia starts to feel there is something sinister going on.

I feel like this was ok until about ½ way through and then the suspense/intrigue really ratchets up. It has perhaps too long of a build up I think. I will say though I did not see the final twist coming.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

This blurb and cover had me eager to try Lisa's new thriller stalker book. Mia the librarian (who feels shy and doesnt get noticed) gets on a dating site with the help/courage of her friends. Mia meets Adam and things started to get creepy. I did struggle a bit with the past/present chapters but by the end I was shocked. I still recommend this book especially if you love stalker thrillers.

I received this book at my request and have voluntarily left this unbiased review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

You Look Beautiful Tonight is a great suspense thriller! I have not read one by L.R. Jones before, but I will be seeking more out in the future!

You look beautiful tonight is a book about stalking. When I read the blurb of the book, I thought it would be something like the Netflix series YOU. When I started reading this book, I was already binge watching YOU for the first time (Yes, I know, about damn time, right?), and since Joe Gardner’s twisted mind was such an alluring thing to watch every day, I thought I would read a book about the same topic, you know, while I’m still in the stalker thriller genre zone and really get in the mood, you know, because the blurb sounded so similar to that of the YOU series.

Just to give a gist, You Look Beautiful Tonight is about a shy, introverted girl called Mia who works in a public library and is forced to make a profile on his dating app. Mia thinks she is invisible (and likes being invisible) but someone thinks differently. It’s when Mia keeps finding secret handwritten notes from a secret admirer is when she realizes that she is not invisible, after all. While being noticed is something new and exciting for Mia that she actually starts following the instructions written in her notes by her secret admirer, little does she know that her admirer has some other plans for her.

So, as you can tell, it’s a very riveting blurb. I had to read it. So, I did. Let’s see how that turned out.
Let’s start with the prose. The writing was just adequate enough to be understandable however there were many run on sentences, and it felt like the author just wanted to fill up the pages. Like there were some changes of timelines from PAST to PRESENT, the past was where the actual story was happening as we read and the present was a time-skip to the climax of the story.

As I read the book in progression, I did feel excited for what was going to happen at the end BUT when I actually got to the end of the book, it wasn’t all that exciting and the present time skips kind of misled me from what actually happened in the climax. I personally just feel that the book was better off without the Past and Present timeline changes.

The plot at the beginning was kind of slow but then later it suddenly gained its pace and paired nicely with the story but the end, like I said, wasn’t what I expected. So, I kind of felt misled from the stalking-stranger genre to something entirely different.

There was a lot of telling rather than showing as well. Like if you look at the main character, at the climax of the book, she is like “Oh my God, I’ve changed.” And I was like uh-huh, are you sure? Because I don’t see it. It was honestly like the characters didn’t even go through a change. Like just wearing branded clothes doesn’t change a person. There was no substantial change in the character or the story, and it just felt to me that it was just the character coming right out and talking to the audience and telling us what’s happening with her, and not showing it to us. It felt really plain and kinda ruined the book for me.

I guess, overall, I would like to give this book a 3 out of 5 stars. I would still recommend this book to people who like reading about twisted mindsets and thrillers in general. Unfortunately, this book did not totally work out for me because it wasn’t what I was expecting, and not that I have to expect a typical storyline to like a book, but the story in this book didn’t just sit well with the plot, in my opinion.

I would like to thank the author, the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest opinion.

Firstly, a huge thanks goes to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for accepting and fulfilling my request for this book.

I'll keep this short and sweet, enlisting the major takeaways and observations I made about the book while reading.

Let us begin with the overall plot and background theme of this work. It's described as a suspenseful thriller which made me imagine a gripping plot that would have me on the edge of my seat. However, to my own detriment, it was, in fact, not so. The story and its progression seemed like any piece of a contemporary detective novel in any bookstore. From the beginning the plot twist we were being driven towards felt obvious and predictable. If the story had been written in a more unique manner, using innovative methods of storytelling, I wouldn't have been feeling disappointed with the theme.

Despite that, the plot progressed relatively quickly, making getting through the book at least a little easier. At times, the scenes, actions and chapters felt very repetitive, although this may be due to the main character's personality and tendency to not let anything go.

When it comes to the characters, they're very stereotypical and archetypal (and not in a good way). A shy "invisible" (as mentioned a plethora of times in the book) librarian without an inch of confidence and self respect, the generic "knight in shining armor" male friend that can do no wrong, a bombshell best friend sitting on her family's money and many more side characters that make the world a harder place for the main character to live in. I found the characters annoying, flat and bland. And apologies to all that feel hurt by that statement, it's simply a personal opinion - one-dimensional characters are just not my thing.

In conclusion, I'd most probably not push this book into my friends' or followers' direction. Yet, I believe that with time the author could have a gripping thriller in their name.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It definitely kept me guessing as it went on. Lisa Renee Jones doesn’t disappoint in this.

A librarian who is "invisible" and a best friend who is outgoing and rich then add in another good friend and that's the beginning of an interesting story. A dating app gone wrong comes with twists and an interesting plot. There were definitely a few places where I really had to stretch my belief that someone would let those things happen but all in all it was an entertaining read.

Due to personal issues I was unable to finish this book but I did manage to read about 40-50%, so I will be giving my opinion on what I have read.

I very much enjoyed the portion I was able to read. I like the friendship dynamics, in my opinion, they are very realistic ( I know a group of friends very similar to this group). The character development has been good. The build up was starting to get me and my curiosity is dying to know who, what, why!
I will definitely be grabbing a copy so I can see how the story finishes!

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for a ARC copy.

'You Look Beautiful Tonight' by L.R. Jones was a pleasant (and thrilling) surprise. Yes, I chose the book purely for the fact that I loved the cover, but once I read the summary, I definitely wanted to read the book. Jones does a fantastic job of keeping the flow moving in a quick pace. So much so that it was difficult for me to put this book down. I kept telling myself "one more chapter", if I didn't have get some sleep, I would have finished this book in one sitting. There were lots of red herrings, but you don't really quite know who Mia's admirer really is, until closer to the end.


Thank you to the author: L.R. Jones, publisher: Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for the ARC for my honest review.
Expected Publishing date: June 1, 2023

Thank you NetGalley!

It is a book you can’t put it down and it makes you wanna swipe to the next page in every single chapter.
My mouth was wide open throughout the whole story and it was unbelievable to say the least.
Creepy, scary, interesting, enjoyable, thrilling story with a private cover.

I picked up L.R. Jones’ new novel You Look Beautiful Tonight hoping for another You-esque story. Stalker novels are downright creepy, and this book is no exception. I always appreciate when a novel keeps me turning the pages, and I couldn’t put this one down … I held on with bated breath, waiting to see what happened next.

You Look Beautiful Tonight is an ominous narrative about a Nashville librarian who has spent her entire life feeling “invisible,” and suddenly finds herself the center of a mysterious man’s attention when she signs up for a dating app at the behest of her best friend Jess. Mia, a bookish thirty two year old, isn’t used to attracting the male gaze; attracting the gaze of anyone in fact. That role is relegated to the beautiful and charismatic Jess, but Mia plays along with the dating app, soon receiving a strange message from a man named Adam. Adam pushes Mia to shed her old skin and become the woman she truly is on the inside, and she finds herself changing the way she dresses and wears her hair, and even asserting herself in ways she never has before. After awhile, however, Mia feels as if she doesn’t have a secret admirer, but a stalker. Adam knows way too much about her and her life, and things are about to turn deadly.

I loved the readability of this book. It is very easy to get lost into and is not overwritten with superfluous details. Nearly every point mentioned on these pages plays into the narrative in some way. Equally commendable are the characters. Although Mia is a self-declared uninteresting person, I enjoyed reading about her life at the downtown Nashville library, which I have actually had the opportunity to visit myself, and immensely relished her relationships with her friends Jess and Jack, and her father, an inventor of sorts who is still reeling from a highly embarrassing appearance on a Shark Tank-like TV show.

Mia’s life in this book plays out in two parts with her ordinary life working in sharp contrast to her secret life with Adam. Every time a situation with Adam would pop up, it was as if a shade was pulled down over Mia’s regular life, shadowing her every step and turn in darkness. Jones does a great job of inserting several red herrings throughout her book, and even has Mia address those suspicious circumstances to throw readers off the scent. Although I had a feeling that I knew what was going on here in this story, Jones had me guessing to the very end. Speaking of which, the end was my least favorite part of the book and is what made me settle on a 4 star rating.

Amazing! Just when you thought the book was going in one direction slam it turns and then makes a final twist you never saw coming!