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    Little Pretty Things: A Novel
    Little Pretty Things: A Novel
    Little Pretty Things: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Little Pretty Things: A Novel

    Written by Lori Rader-Day

    Narrated by Ann Marie Gideon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    OLD RIVALRIES NEVER DIE. BUT SOME RIVALS DO.

    Juliet Townsend is used to losing. Back in high school, she lost every track team race to her best friend, Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, she’s still running behind, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning rooms at the Mid-Night Inn, a one-star motel that attracts only the cheap or the desperate. But what life won’t provide, Juliet takes.

    Then one night, Maddy checks in. Well-dressed, flashing a huge diamond ring, and as beautiful as ever, Maddy has it all. By the next morning, though, Juliet is no longer jealous of Maddy—she’s the chief suspect in her murder.

    To protect herself, Juliet investigates the circumstances of her friend’s death. But what she learns about Maddy’s life might cost Juliet everything she didn’t realize she had.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 28, 2018
    ISBN9780062888921
    Little Pretty Things: A Novel
    Author

    Lori Rader-Day

    Lori Rader-Day is the Edgar Award–nominated and Anthony, Agatha, and Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of Death at Greenway, The Lucky One, Under a Dark Sky, The Day I Died, Little Pretty Things, and The Black Hour. She lives in Chicago, where she is cochair of the mystery readers’ conference Midwest Mystery Conference and teaches creative writing at Northwestern University. She served as the national president of Sisters in Crime in 2020.

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    Reviews for Little Pretty Things

    3.5/5

    28 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Lori is a writer I know from the Chicago mystery writer groups I used to belong to before moving back to Boston. Her mysteries are not a series, but are standalone mystery-thrillers. Her first book The Black Hour was about a college professor who was shot by a student and returns to the campus the next year. Little Pretty Things is about a young woman who cleans rooms in a motel in her hometown in Indiana. She was a high school track star whose dreams fizzled when her father died during her first year of college. She has to face the past when her former friend and competitor who always managed to beat her returns and is found dead. Written in first person, the self critical, snarky voice of Juliet pulls you along through the story to a satisfying end. With a likable protagonist and well drawn picture of small town life in the Midwest, this is a fun book to read. Try it and enjoy it. Frances McNamara Author of the Emily Cabot Mysteries.
    • 2/5
      Too much fluff and unnecessary plot lines. Would have served much better as a concise short story.
    • 4/5
      This is a slow moving book, so if you are just reading for action, don't pick it up. It's hard to believe that Julie, a top track star in high school, would be stuck in a dead-end job cleaning motel rooms ten years after graduation. She has opportunity to consider the circumstances that led to this situation when her former BFF from high school returns to town and is killed. I liked the self-development that Julie goes through when she begins to examine her life from a different perspective and to change her attitude about possibilities.
    • 2/5
      This is one of those books that sound so good when you read the back, that you buy it and then when you try and read it you discover it is not at all what you expected.The story C could have been good, it should have been great, but it is so far from good or great. The pacing it at glacial speed, I guess to drag out a story that the reader figures out in the first fifty pages but the dull, boring, dim witted narrator doesn't figure out until literally the second to last page. Julie the narrator was best friends with Maddie, the track star her senior yea roof high school, something happens the are no longer pals and we fast forward 10 years. I won't even bore you with what did happen, because while it should have been and is a relevant occurrence, in the hands of this author, you get the feeling Julie was an unpopular outsider, rather than the second seed on the track team. But she comes of as poor poor pitiful me. This book is as trite as a Megan Abbott book and twice as boring. How could a 300 page book be so slow, dull, and cliched?This author probably writes a good YA book and maybe that is what this was only it wasn't shelved that way. What I do know is I won't make the mistake of reading another book by this author.
    • 5/5
      I have a special fondness for stories about far from perfect, less than amazing characters. Throw in an insular small town setting and I’m generally hooked--which certainly proved true with mystery thriller Little Pretty Things; I could barely put the book down to get on with my own life. Juliet Townsend was a promising track star in high school, but she always took second place because her best friend Maddy ran just a little bit faster. Never coming in first meant no scholarships to prestigious schools and when her father died suddenly Juliet dropped out of college and returned home, which is where she still is ten years after high school graduation. She works cleaning rooms in a dive hotel, barely supporting herself and her mentally fragile mother and compulsively pocketing random items left behind by guests. After a decade of no contact, her former best friend shows up with a huge diamond engagement ring and the desire to reconnect, but Juliet, full of resentment, brushes Maddy off. By the next morning Maddy is dead, and Juliet is a suspect in her murder. Of course Juliet investigates, partly to clear her name but also to find out what happened to the friend she regrets rebuffing. This takes her back into the world of high school, this time as a substitute gym teacher coaching girls on the current track team, and being there gives Juliet new perspectives about her own participation in the sport. Juliet also spends time sneaking around in the dark, going after possible clues, and though I had a fairly good idea of who the murderer would turn out to be the story is highly suspenseful. Without being didactic Little Pretty Things addresses some important issues, racial prejudice and teenage sexulity among them. The well drawn characters really made the story for me--I especially enjoyed the relationships between Juliet and Lu, the slightly older Hispanic woman who also cleans rooms at the hotel, and Juliet and the female cop investigating the murder, a testy former high school classmate Juliet had ignored when she and Maddy were track team celebrities. I’ll be looking for the next book from Lori Rader-Day.