NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Who’s really following you on social media? The scam of a lifetime brings together two wildly different women in this page-turning thriller about greed, legacy, and betrayal from the New York Times bestselling author of Watch Me Disappear.An ID Book Club Selection • “It’s Dynasty meets Patricia Highsmith.”—The Washington Post Nina once bought into the idea that her … Highsmith.”—The Washington Post
Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.
Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.
Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.
This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.
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Pretty Things is awesome. Simple as that. I loved every page. Janelle Brown is your new must-read author.
I devoured this book — an incredible read.
This book, friends, this book. I will be raving about it all year, I’m sure; it’s already made it onto my best of 2020 list. A con artist gets in over her head when she tries to pull a fast one on a wealthy Instagram influencer – but it’s so much more: a perfectly paced gothic mystery, a searing social commentary, a case study in how to write rich, deep characters. This one’s a winner. I can’t wait to see it on the screen, it’s one of Nicole Kidman’s next projects.
This one had me from page one. Such a chilling, suspenseful cat and mouse book. And the twists! I’m terrible at writing reviews – I’m afraid I will give too much away. But I loved this and tried to read it in one sitting, but my stupid life wouldn’t let me. Highly recommend if you are into psychological thrillers with excellent twists
Immensely entertaining and clever, Pretty Things is a novel perfectly calibrated to our social media-obsessed world. Following the lives of a couple of high-end con artists and their run-in with an heiress-turned-influencer, this twisty, suspenseful novel explores the personal motivations behind each of its three main characters and the triple-crossing that occurs once they come together. Like a car wreck you can’t turn away from, you’ll keep turning the pages of this fun and thoroughly modern thriller!
I love a good con story — especially when I can’t tell who’s the actual mark and who’s the real con artist. In Janelle Brown’s compulsively readable Pretty Things, the good girls and the bad girls keep switching places in a story that will keep you turning pages till the end. Even more richly told than Watch Me Disappear, Brown’s latest novel has the same sharp observations that are her trademark — about shifting identities and the secrets we all keep.
I adored this book – it was twisty, engaging, and the writing was beautiful. Also extremely relevant in this social media focused world where we don’t know what’s real or fake anymore. Highly recommend.
I don’t always love thrillers, but this one caught my interest and kept me reading for hours one day … neglecting chores and leaving my poor family to scrounge for leftovers for dinner. It’s a twined tale, told in two alternating voices, of Nina, the daughter of a grifter mom and Vanessa, born into a life of enormous privilege. Their lives intersect when they are both teens, and both come away from those years with a sense of having been terribly wronged by the other person’s family. Years later, their lives intersect again.
For me, what sets this book apart from some thrillers is the elegant, economical writing and the acute attention to the emotional life of the characters. These two women protagonists are messy, ambivalent, troubled, and disillusioned, but they are also capable of reflection and growth. The themes running through are very current–the addictive quality of social media, the problems our young adults face when they get out of college with heaps of debt, the challenges presented when two people interpret an event very differently, and our desire for connecting meaningfully with new people when an identity is something that can be forged on the web. I think this book would please readers who loved THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, but it would also satisfy readers who liked LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE and the Broadway musical WICKED. (Odd trio, I know!) It is a tale of family dysfunction but also a story about women learning to be strong in the broken places.
The absorbing manner in which the lives of Nina and Vanessa intertwine makes this book hard to put down. I stayed up to the wee hours to finish because I had to know how it ended. Great read.
What a great book! These well-written and developed characters were twisted into a complex story that never took the easy road.
“Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, despite your best-or worst-intentions.” – Pretty Things
So many people used the word “captivated” when describing their experience with this book and I can understand why. The characters are so real, with good and bad qualities, that you can’t help feel very quickly as if you know them. That sort of complexity never let go either. Janelle Brown never took the easy road in this book, weaving two very different women into one world. She challenged my own assumptions in a way that I loved, forcing me to see our commonalities as women when we remove the outer veil of social media and society expectations.
This book explores misconceptions, mental illness, and manipulation in a very interesting light and it will keep you guessing again and again as it twists deeper. The two main characters, Nina and Vanessa, were given real room to grow and react in a way so authentic you forget you’re in a book. You can have a whole idea of someone in your head and be completely wrong and that misinformation can be the narrative for how you shape your life. I was often kept guessing while cheering for the intelligent decisions made throughout and I loved the resolution, which is the best, right? I could not stop turning the pages until I was on the last one. I highly recommend this book!
Wow wow WOW, what an amazing read! I don’t want to give too much away, but I LOVED how the twists and turns in this book kept me guessing. I listened to the audiobook and the narrators were excellent as well. Highly recommend!
In this stunning slow burn of a novel, a grifter and an heiress/Instagram influencer meet at an old mansion in Lake Tahoe, where, through their separate but overlapping cons, they must reconcile with the ghosts of their past, or become lost to them forever. PRETTY THINGS lives up to its title—or perhaps exceeds it; the writing is gorgeous, often to the point where I had to stop reading to allow space for the lyrical lines to resonate. There was one exquisite image in particular (to paraphrase, because I can’t find the page number: water rippling like a harp that had just been strummed) that I know will stay with me forever. I also love that this book features two complex, flawed, “unlikeable” women who, were they not carrying the wounds of their past, would probably be friends but instead see each other as adversaries. They are both lonely and hurting and capable of great vulnerability but are both trying so hard to prove that they’re impenetrable. The setting of this book was also exquisite—the beauty of the lake and old mansion a perfect foil to the ugliness that the characters bring to the place. Janelle Brown does an excellent job exploring the different ways we con each other (whether through social media or personal relationships)—and even how we con ourselves. The ending was satisfying without being sugarcoated or too sentimental, and it even included a couple surprises that I did not see coming at all.
“Pretty Things” by Janelle Brown opens with a puzzle, Lake Tahoe, veiled in the background, awaiting its purpose. The book is about a con, an enormous swindle. To be a truly great confidence set up, the victim cannot know it is a scam. However what happens if the scammer is being scammed as well? In “Pretty Things,” the lines drawn between the mark and perpetrator are blurred or even missing. This is also the story of a house, that house, that Stonehaven, that changed everything and everyone.
Brown presents this deception to readers in a series of alternating first person narratives so readers get impressions of people, places, and events from both perspectives. Nina is a con artist, a thief who watches the people who have things and want the whole world to know, the “Influencers.” They have things, so many pretty things, and they share it all on social media, begging Nina take inventory. Readers follow Nina into her world, get to know her, and understand how and why she got to her current place and situation. Nina also shares everything, her dreams, her fears, her plans, and her past. Vanessa, a spoiled rich girl, a Liebling, gives readers a view from the other side through her first person commentary. She talks directly to readers, lamenting her situation, living all alone in that great big house. To Nina, Vanessa presents as the perfect target. But in this set-up, nothing goes as planned, and unexpected events complicate the plan. Things go right and go wrong, very, very wrong.
“Pretty Things” keeps readers guessing what is the unexpected and what is a calculated diversion. I received a review copy of “Pretty Things” from Janelle Brown, and Random House Publishing Group. I found it compelling, deceptive, and entertaining.
A grifter, an heiress and a fake boyfriend tangled up in a con of a lifetime. How exciting does that sound?
This was quite the enthralling read where you may just never know who the con or the mark may be and that is just the beginning. This was ingeniously told story about complex flawed characters with amazing back stories. The book was told in the point of view of two women whose paths have crossed once more in a very intricate story telling that was exciting as it was twisted in a very good way.
Nina, raised by her mother who was a small time con, promised to never follow her mother’s future. However, burdened with school loans, unable to find a job, and a sick mom with piling medical bills, Nina pushed to desperation does what she knows best and what seems to run in her blood – run a con.
Vanessa, an heiress to a dwindling family fortune, tries to keep appearances as an Instagram Influencer living the life of luxury by traveling the world, modeling expensive clothes and fancy cars, and living in the mansion she inherited after the recent death of her father. Unbeknownst to the outside world, the coffers were long empty.
I enjoyed reading this book for many reasons: the modern aspect of the story where one of the characters was an influencer, the thrilling and unpredictable plot twists, and the story told in alternating POVs of the women inspiring a story of our generation that is clever and unsettling.
You will love this!
What happens when the Player gets played? When a Grifter gets what is coming to them? When someone you love and trust turns out to be the person you always saw? When the Played turns to be a Player?
Lily and her daughter, Nina, are always on the move, one step in front of the landlord. Going from one city to the next trying to make a living. They move to Lake Tahoe, and Nina befriends, Benny, a broken boy and Vanessa, his spoiled sister from a rich family. Tahoe proves to be a short fix though. Life doesn’t turn out exactly as Nina has planned though. She meets Lachlan, and together they start a deceit like no others. They return to Tahoe and target Vanessa, now a famous influencer. What happens from here will open your eyes.
First book by this author. Write up sounded promising, cover was beautiful. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure the book was for me, but as one chapter became 5, I was hooked. Original plot, interesting shady characters and personality disorders. The story unwinds and a decent pace, I wasn’t really sure where it was going, but came together with a somewhat satisfactory/somewhat disappointing ending.
Thanks to Ms Brown, Random House and NetGalley for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.
Pretty Things is not a high-octane thriller, but a slow-burner with a lot of backstory which is told in dual narration by the two main characters, Nina and Vanessa. Their perspectives are naturally colored by their limited knowledge and their belief in others’ misperceptions.
Vanessa is a vapid, poor-little-rich girl who is perpetually seeking validation from others. Nina is more sympathetic, but she is very naïve despite the nature of the people in her intimate circle.
I loved the story premise, and the dual narration by two questionable narrators added a dark sense of foreboding. However, with this dual narration, there is a bit too much duplication, and that combined with the abundance of description and detail, made for very long book. I feel that some careful editing is in order. It is the difference between the movie you don’t wish to end and the one that leaves you squirming in your seat because it is unnecessarily long.
I did very much enjoy the last third of the book. Not only does the plot pace pick up at the point, but the balance starts to tip. I was delighted to no longer be sure of how the story would play out, and the twists are amazing! I did not see the pivotal roles of two of the secondary characters. The wicked indignation made me want to roar. The story climax is perfect, and the denouement unexpected. I haven’t decided exactly how I feel about the ending, but it is clever.
There were a lot of expected twists with just enough surprises to keep me hopping.
This was a fascinating story and I love that it’s set in Lake Tahoe. I’m now a Janelle Brown fan – the twists and turns of her books are unexpected and the storyline and characters of this one make it a page-turner.
This was a super fun novel. I loved the main character and how her backstory, skills and life as a grifter both worked against her and was her strength. The Lake Tahoe setting came to life for me. Fabulous writing. A wonderful slow burn suspense.
This is the second book I’ve read by Janelle Brown and I love her descriptive writing style. The characters, though flawed, were relatable and the plot was constantly twisting. I enjoyed the surprising ways the various scams unfolded and the thoughtful look into mental health issues. I recommend Pretty Things to readers who enjoy slow-burn, twisty, character-driven suspense and who aren’t intimidated by 500+ page books. I would have easily given this book 5 stars if it was about 100 or so pages shorter.