Four Women. Four Confessions. One Murder.
Something has gone terribly wrong at the Banks wedding. A man is dead. Four different women rush to offer confessions, each insisting that they committed the crime ¿ alone.
Ginger is holding her family together by a thread, and this wedding weekend is not the fabulous getaway she anticipated.
Kate has enough money to buy her way out of anything. Well, … way out of anything. Well, almost anything.
Emily can’t shake her reputation or her memories, and she’s planning to drown this whole vacation in a bottle.
Lulu’s got ex-husbands to spare, and another on the way ¿ as soon as she figures out what the devil the current husband is up to behind her back.
Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know ¿ and they’re not telling. This page-turning novel explores the depths of friendship and the truths we love to ignore.
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If you want a lively, light, intriguing “whodunit” this is the perfect book for you! Likable characters and mini-mysteries keep you turning pages to find out who did it…and even, who the victim is!Pretty Guilty Women by Gina LaManna is the perfect “spa” read! Best savored poolside, with a mimosa in hand.
Detective Ramone is faced with a unique dilemma as he seeks to uncover a murderer-he has too many confessors to the crime and each insist they acted alone. Gina Lamanna’s newest offering, Pretty Guilty Women, is buoyed by the wake of other popular thrillers that feature wealthy but troubled women fighting back against oppressive partners. Lamanna’s version consists of a series of police interviews with the copious witnesses, followed by short chapters containing that character’s contribution to the unspooling storyline. The women in the book are portrayed as angry and powerful in dealing with the men that they are paired who are presented as either completely ineffectual or dangerous. The action takes place in a “closed room” set-up: an elite spa hosting a lavish destination wedding weekend where the murder inconveniently occurs. The main characters are connected by family ties and/or college friendships, all rife with conflict and resentment. Themes include domestic violence, infertility struggles, parental challenges, substance abuse, and resistance to female oppression. These topics have been extensively explored recently in a variety of ways, and it would be a challenge for anyone seeking to present a fresh perspective in an overcrowded and talented field. Lamanna’s prior well-loved mystery series are typically more cozy and romance-infused, and that sensibility is apparent here, but it doesn’t quite fit the weighty topics she is trying to address. Pretty Guilty Women contains some pulse-raising moments that make it worth the quick time it takes to read, but other contemporary works have already covered this ground-and have done so to greater effect.
Thanks to the author and Sourcebooks for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Love the strong female characters and the dark underlying themes — a perfect summer read.
Pretty Guilty Women
by Gina LaManna
Pub Date: 03 Sep 2019
Review by
Dot O, Reviewer
Last updated on 01 Sep 2019
My Recommendation
#PrettyGuiltyWomen #NetGalley
Three women, Emily, Ginger, and Kate, who were college roommates reunite at the lavish wedding of the fourth roommate, Whitney. The “wedding week” is held at a very exclusive and expensive spa and resort that caters to the wealthy. Although all the friends don’t fit into this category, they all manage to attend. Lu Lu, an older women meets the group and they share a camaraderie by revealing secrets and hidden fears to each other. This begins at the bar with several bottles of wine and champagne shared among the newly formed group. Sounds perfect, right? But then how does a murder during the Rehearsal Dinner fit in? And who is the victim? All we know is that each woman in the group confesses to the murder! The story unfolds with each woman’s point of view, and is moved along by the interviews held by the police detective assigned the confusing case. The novel invoked differing emotions as I turned the pages. Humor was mixed in with raw emotions as the secrets, fears and lives of the women were unveiled. The characters are finely drawn and the story is told in an easy to read style. For fans of Big Little Lies, you will enjoy the complex friendships developed among the women, the secrets that get laid bare and the changes that occur in the lives of those involved during the wedding extravaganza.
I loved this book and highly recommend it with a five star rating. The ending left me with my mouth open! Be sure and add this new novel, Pretty Guilty Women to your TBR list……you won’t be sorry!
A big thanks to the author, Gina LaManna, to NetGalley, and to the publishers, Sourcebook Landmark, for my advanced copy of this great book! All opinions expressed are my own.
At the rehearsal for a wedding at a fabulous Californian resort a man is dead and four different women insist that they alone are responsible.
Each woman’s story is alternated with a police interrogation in which Detective Ramone tries to sort through the confusing and contradictory accounts that each woman claim’s is the truth.
I was hooked on Pretty Guilty Women from the opening chapter, it was suspenseful and creepy. That feeling lessened a bit as I waited for the story to progress, but the pacing was good, and it held my interest throughout. I wasn’t completely surprised at the revelation of “who dunnit”, but it didn’t lessen the enjoyment of the book for me.
*I received a copy of Pretty Guilty Women from NetGalley and Sourcebooks in exchange for an honest review
What a great fast paced unputdownable read!
I love books like this that tell a story of strong female protagonist’s and the lengths that these females will go through to honor their bonds and friendships even when they become estranged.
My first read from this Author and I’m already looking forward to her next book out in September 2020.
Best friends during their college years, four women gather at the sight of an extravagant wedding by one of them. Having not seen seen or communicated since college, they are not all happy to be there.
They each bring their husbands, boyfriends, children. It’s like watching a drama unfold. With a homicide detective questioning each of the guests, and those that they brought with them, including the bridal couple.
Seems that a man was murdered during the rehearsal dinner, and unfortunately for the detective, there are four confessions. Each confession is said to have been created by that person and that person alone.
Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know — and they’re not telling.
This is a unique take of the lives of these four women , with the menfolk coming in as secondary characters. The book bounces from the detective’s interviews, followed by a look at the person who’s doing the confessing. This one kept me glued to the pages and I hated putting it down for more than a minute.
It’s well written and the characters are all flawed in one sense or another. It’s not highly suspenseful except for the fact that the reader gets no hint of who the murdered man is. It seems like all the women have a motive for killing the men in their lives.
Many thanks to the author / Little, Brown Book Group UK / Netgalley / THE Book Club Reviewer Group (FB) for the digital copy of this psychological crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.
A murder committed … and four women owning up to the murder. Who is the real murderer? What happened?
This is not just a standard murder mystery where you are introduced to characters, there is a murder and someone goes sleuthing. In this case you don’t get all the information until the end of the book. You are introduced to the characters involved when they are interviewed by the police detective and get some background information. Actually quite cleverly done.
I am a fan a Gina LaManna’s books but this is a foray into a different genre for her. I like it. She has an entertaining writing style. The murder mystery as a whole did not really catch my interest. The relationships between the women in the book did. There also seems to be a message that the grass is not always greener somewhere else. Someone else’s life could seem perfect and idyllic, but that is just not always true.
The setting is the Serenity Spa & Resort, the plush California location of the DeBleu-Banks wedding where the guests are pampered the minute they set foot on the lush grounds. Into this tropical paradise come 5 women. Wealthy Kate, troubled Emily, and harried Ginger were roommates of the bride 15 years earlier in college. Lulu is an older woman whose fourth husband is a relative of the groom. Sydney is a very young single mother also related to the groom. These women meet in the bar where each is drowning her sorrows. Each chapter opens with Detective Ramone questioning these women and others about a murder they all admit to but we don’t know who died until the end. This keeps the pace moving rapidly. I stayed up late into the night finishing this one. I can’t say I particularly related to any of the women but their stories interested me enough to want to know what brought them to this place. I loved the author’s style of writing and her character development. The storyline and ending were plausible. This was a very enjoyable book that I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review. I hope to read more by Ms.LaManna
From the moment I started reading Pretty Guilty Women, I was completely immersed in the gripping, twisty, diffuser-filled world of a posh spa wedding, where four college friends reunite, each with old baggage and new. Sparkling with insight, wine, humor, and a drop of blood, the women in this book leapt off the page and straight into my heart. Pretty Guilty Women is a must read!
Gina LaManna really knows how to write about female friendships. I could see myself or at least one friend in each of the female characters. The idea of college friends falling out of touch with each other, only to come together for a wedding, and have all the young adult feelings come to the surface once again, is something that happens every day. And LaManna captures it perfectly. The insecurities, drama, competitiveness, and more comes to light under LaManna’s wonderful character portrayals.
And LaMana doesn’t just write about middle aged women well. She also does a fantastic job with children, teens, and older women. I don’t know if she meant to do this, but the way she incorporated the maiden, mother, and crone aspects into the book was wonderful. Every stage of a woman’s life is magical and has its own problems which LaManna demonstrates perfectly.
As for the thriller part of the story it was not as intense as others that I’ve read, but it still had me turning the page to see what would happen next. Although I was interested to find out who the killer was, and how the murder came about, I found myself drawn more to the drama that was playing out between the women. In ways I feel like this could just as easily be classified as Woman’s Fiction as a Thriller.
I was content with how the conclusion came together. Although I guessed at parts of it, there were still a few surprises. I will say the epilogue is where the ending of this book really shined. It left me with various emotions that I had to sort through, and made me wonder if I would have handled the situation the same way.
Pretty Guilty Women is the first book I’ve read by LaManna, and when I went to her website to read about her other books, I was happy to find four more series of hers that I am going to be checking out.
The Lola Pink Mysteries, The Hex Files, Magic & Mixology, and The Lacey Luzzi series all look likes books I would really enjoy.
This book is totally different than other books by this author. This is a more mature read. It still has some humor thrown in to keep things from getting too heavy, but it is a more serious read. I liked the style of writing this book has. It alternates between several different POVs, and the chapters start with a police transcript. (Which is where much of the humor comes in.) The mystery is written in a way that the readers don’t know who it is that has been killed until the end. And each of the women seem to have a motive to kill. (Not necessarily the same person.) There are secrets that are revealed as the story moves along and we get closer to knowing who was killed and why. There is some subject matter that may be difficult to read for some audience (dealing with pregnancy and abuse.) In addition to the actual mystery, this is also a story about friendships, and letting go of the past hurts. The characters are all unique and each has their own problems they are dealing with, some more traumatic than others. Despite their differences and despite the fact that they had lost touch over the years and had some animosity, these ladies pulled together for the greater good when one of them needed help. Even though there is a murder involved, there is a feel good vibe about the book… you don’t really get it until all is said and done, but you finish the book on a good note. It’s well written, easy to read. There is no sexual content, but it is eluded to a couple of times. There is some heavier subject matter involved, but I would say this is suitable for 16+.
*I received a copy of this book from Netgalley.
Pretty Guilty Women is a very well written book. Itis a fast read. It caught me up from the beginning and kept my attention throughout trying to figure out who really Killed the man and why the four women each claimed to do it. the women are friends from collage that haven’t seen each other in a long time they come together for a wedding where a man is found murdered. Each women has their own reasons for claiming they killed him but the fun is following along and trying to figure it all out. the characters and settings are done good you can see something like this actually happening so it makes it more intense to read. would definately say it is worth reading.
If you’re a fan of Big Little Lies or even Sex in the City, this book is definitely for you.
A fast-paced read, with many characters that i found hard at times to keep up, each main character has a life description and along comes their family, children or not, and the story with each other.
A great summer read for sure but in the end, there were things that for me felt unreliable or unbelievable.
I’ll still recommend this book because i really enjoyed it.
Reminiscent of “Big, Little Lies,” Gina LaManna writes this quirky mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very end. We meet five women who are all attending the same wedding. Some are old college friends, some are new kindred spirits. One thing they all have in common is that they each have secrets they aren’t sharing. As the tale unfolds truths are revealed and friendships are made and renewed. At the center of it all is the idea of motherhood and what makes mother tick. A fun, quick read that kept me engaged through the end.
This book is about 4 college roommates, Whitney, Kate, Emily, and Ginger, who get together for Whitney’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in years, and don’t really keep in close touch. There is a lot of baggage they are carrying with them – and it all comes out during the week of the wedding when they are all together at a resort spa. The roommates also meet Lulu, an older woman, and Sydney, a single mother, at the resort. Also, there is a murder at the spa, and four of the women confess to killing the man. The problem – none of them are giving the correct account of the murder.
I did not like one of the women in this book. All the characters were full of angst or self-pity, and I just didn’t like any of them. The only saving grace for me was that I was able to read the book rather quickly. I didn’t like the ending – I found it to be a bit odd that Kate would investigate the way she did.
#PrettyGuiltyWomen #GinaLaManna
In Gina LaManna’s PRETTY GUILTY WOMEN, a man is found dead at a spa resort, and four women staying at the resort for a wedding celebration all separately confess to killing him. So who really killed him? As the police explore who committed the crime, the narrative unfolds into multiple points of view as we learn more about each of the women, the journey their lives have taken and the connections they have to one another.
I found the author’s writing kept me engaged throughout this slow-burn of a book. And even though there is murder to be solved, the primary focus is the women as they take stock, make comparisons and question how fulfilled they really are.
Murder aside, I found Pretty Guilty Women to be quite a light read. Ideal for when you want to be entertained without having to think too hard.
Well! There has been a murder at a wedding. What is really odd…is four women have confessed to the murder. Why? Only they know the truth!
These four women each have their own issues and problems. So why add to their long list of complications? You will have to read this to find out. I did not figure this out until the author wanted me to. That is unusual for me. I am very good at solving the mysteries! You know there is a cover up….but you don’t know the ins and outs or the whys and what fors.
This is an unusual premise for a book. Very unique. I just thought there were too many characters and too much nonsense which did not relate to the story.
I received this novel from Sourcebooks for a honest review.
3.5 stars for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.
Quick, fast paced read about 4 college friends that reunite for one of the groups over the top wedding week at an exclusive spa. These Friends haven’t seen each other in years, after life and a falling out put distance between them. While at the spa, they meet an older woman and a young single mother with secrets. Then a murder!
Told in 4 voices with police interviews thrown in add to the page turning mystery. An easy, not very complicated read. Characters are whiney and not necessarily likable. But if you are looking for a fun escape murder mystery, or a quick read for a fall weekend, this book could be for you.