REVIEW: "Pretty Things" by Janelle Brown
A rule-follower, potentially to a fault, I have spent my life coloring inside the lines.
But despite my rigid adherence to the rules, if I see a police car in my neighborhood, I wonder if they are there for me.
If I’m texting while shopping, before I tuck my phone back into my purse, I conspicuously hold it in the air. I want to make it clear to whichever loss prevention person who has been watching me that I’m not hamfistedly pilfering something.
As I stand in queue for airport security, my heart always starts to beat a bit faster. Do I have any illegal drugs on my person, I wonder, despite the fact that I am not a user of illegal drugs.
This excessive paranoia about being caught breaking a rule is probably due primarily to two things:
Being a rule-follower has been a pretty fundamental part of my identity for the last 37 years and
I have seen Orange is the New Black and I know that I am far too delicate for prison.
Given my lifelong commitment to rule following, when I tried to decide how I would go about earning a living, grifting was never an option that held much appeal.
But for Nina, one of the dual protagonists in Janelle Brown's Pretty Things, grifting was less a desirable career option and more a specialized skill in which she was likely genetically predisposed to excel. The daughter of a woman who never met a fool she couldn't scam, it was grifting that put food on the table during Nina’s childhood.
Nina’s mother, Lily, initially tried to shield her daughter from the harsh ways of the world. But by the time Nina reached adolescence, Lily knew that keeping her illicit occupation secret from her daughter wasn’t a realistic goal.
Fortunately for Nina, it was around this time that Lily was invited to the principal’s office and informed that her daughter was special.
Nina was gifted.
She was deserving of extra attention.
She had profuse potential that, if harnessed properly, could allow her to have a life the likes of which Lily could never dream.
Newly committed to setting her daughter up for a life far different from her own, Lily arranged to move to the Pacific Northwest. There, Lily told her daughter, was a school that would help Nina fully realize her capabilities.
So the pair relocated to the ritzy and seasonal Lake Tahoe.
And it was in Lake Tahoe that Nina met Benny, the only son in a wealthy family who lived in an impressive and expansive mansion called Stonehaven.
Though his wealth might have been what Lily would have noticed first, Nina just noticed that, like her, Benny Liebling was different. And it was this mutual deviation from the norm that induced the pair to form an ill-fated and tenuous friendship.
Unfortunately, it was to be short-lived. Before Nina knew it, she would leave Tahoe. And along with abandoning the town, she would abandon any aspirations of grandeur Lily might have temporary instilled in her.
Though she’s changed a lot since her youth, Nina has never stopped thinking of the Lieblings.
She’s tried to keep up with the family. And Benny’s older sister, Vanessa, makes it easy by oversharing her life on social media.
It’s because of Vanessa’s oversharing that Nina knows both that Benny’s father has died and that Vanessa is now living in Stonehaven, the grandiose mansion that has retained the enigmatic draw it had all those years ago.
And it is also because of Vanessa’s oversharing that Nina, now a grifter herself, knows just how to acquire the money she needs to pay for the expensive cancer treatments that the now-terminally ill Lily needs to extend her life: by going back to Lake Tahoe and stealing from the Lieblings.
But Vanessa won’t be the easy mark Nina expects her to be. Her life hasn’t been as perfect as it seems. She isn’t the spoiled little rich girl, easily tricked and thrown aside, that Nina was hoping would be the only thing standing between her and the Liebling fortune.
In the end, it will be a battle of wills between these two distinctively different through decisively strong women.
And it is unclear who will be victorious.
Describing the strengths of this novel is difficult. This isn’t because there was a dearth of strengths, but instead because the strengths themselves were oddly elusory.
From start to finish, this novel was engaging and engrossing. As a reader, I lost myself completely in the worlds of these two women.
Page after page my attachment to both Nina and Vanessa grew, and my investment in their mutually exclusive successes increased.
Somehow, I found myself rooting for two women who were actively working against each other.
I could root for both of them because, really, neither one of them was entirely in the wrong.
Neither one was without reason or justification.
Neither one was the villain.
With a delicate hand, Brown painted her story in broad brushstrokes of murky grey. And this left her readers — left me — completely torn.
On a more global scale, the writing in this novel was...delightful. Brown’s writing was natural and beguiling.
It was lyrical and profound.
It was truly pleasant to read.
And this is always a welcome surprise, particularly in thrillers. Too often, I find, thriller writers present their plots gracelessly, amassing paragraph after paragraph of chunky writing that is mechanical, functional.
That was not the case here.
The prose was as beautiful and satisfying as the story itself.
And, really, it’s fitting that her writing was so beautiful as beauty itself is central to this novel.
The physical beauty that Vanessa used to captivate her followers on social media.
The historic beauty of the pricy, significant relics that filled Stonehaven.
The emotional beauty of love, both familial and romantic, that served as a justification for so many otherwise unreasonable actions.
The pretty things that complicate life.
It was, in truth, probably because this novel had such a hidden depth — because the seemingly simple strengths were layered upon each other — that articulating one thing that makes it so special is tantamount of impossible.
It was a delightful cat and mouse game with constantly shifting alliances and almost perpetual uncertainty. And it was an amazing read.
This 5 out of 5 cocktail novel is not one to miss.
I am a sucker for strong, lyrical, sometimes even flowery writing. Adjective and adverbs aplenty, that’s the way to my heart! Which authors do you think have a particular way with words? Tell me about them in the comments, below.
Moving on to my next read. Fingers crossed I like it as much as this one! Want to see what I pick? Subscribe to updates in the sidebar on the right and follow me on Goodreads.
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