Pretty Ugly Lies by Pamela Crane
Published: 01 Aug 2018 by BloodHound Books
Swathi’s Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: A perfect mix of crime and domestic chaos illustrated through sensible writing.
Plot:
A mother sits in a pool of blood—the blood of her family.
Jo’s idyllic life would make the Kardashians jealous. Then one day her daughter is abducted and the only way to find her is to unravel her dark past.
Ellie is a devoted wife… until she discovers the pain of betrayal. Now vengeance is all she can think about.
Party-girl Shayla knows how to hide her demons. But when she’s confronted with a life-shattering choice, it will cost her everything.
June knows suffering intimately, though the smile she wears keeps it hidden.
Four intertwined lives. Four deadly lies. One killer hiding among them.
Author Bio:
Pamela Crane is a professional juggler. Not the type of juggler who can toss flaming torches in the air, but a juggler of four kids, a writing addiction, a horse rescuer, and a book editor by trade. She lives on the edge (ask her Arabian horse about that—he’ll tell you all about their wild adventures while trying to train him!) and she writes on the edge. Her characters and plots are her escape from the real world of dirty diapers and cleaning horse stalls, and she thrives off of an entertaining tale.
To pick up a copy of a free thriller, or to find out more about her chaotic existence, visit her website at www.pamelacrane.com.
Get this book on Amazon
Swathi’s Review:
The story starts with a shocked wife surrounded by the blood of her family, murdered in her own home. Yet, she sits there feeling no emotions, just numbness. Did she kill them?
Then slowly, we get introduced to the lives and families of 4 women living in a beautiful friendly neighborhood, where crimes like abduction, rape, burglary are not prone to happen. They’re meant to be the SAFE haven. Yet, bad things happen and a 3-year old girl gets abducted from the neighborhood park, just as the mother of 3, closes her eyes for a few negligible seconds. Will the girl return home safe?
While these are two main themes the story fixes to develop, there is also significant development of other characters including the families of the women in question. They are narrated in each women’s POV and the writing is so brilliant, you might even tissues to wipe your tears.
In this book, I see a perfect mixture of suspense, crime and thrill surrounding the lives of a neighborhood, where families are important, and anything external can lead to an automatic destructive mechanism. For instance, Lies. Small, negligible ones, that we might not think will come to haunt us in the future, but sadly, it does.
As humans, we lie. It’s just a defense mechanism, right? While each lie we utter has its own consequences, women do have the bigger lot to lose, don’t we?
This book showed me the ultimate destruction that happens to a family, when a small lie, however insignificant that can be, comes to haunt in the future. Family is important, and kids are responsibility. A BIG responsibility, yes. But why bring them to Earth, when you can’t take care of them? They’re after all, dependent on their parents.
THIS is why I LOVE women’s fiction. This book gives the picture of the reality behind bringing up kids, big families, and the sacrifices they involve in the contemporary world. I’d strongly recommend women to read this, for courage, self-esteem, and Inspiration.
All the opinions are my own.
Happy reading. XoXo!