464. Pretty Things
Rating: ☆☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by: Lisa Stock
Author: Janelle Brown
Genre: Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
496 pages, published April 21, 2020
Reading Format: e-Book on Overdrive
Summary
Pretty Things tells the story of two very different women. Nina is a grifter who grew up bouncing from town to town with her less than honorable single mother. Vanessa is an heiress who has made a name for herself as a lifestyle Instagram celebrity. Their worlds collide in Lake Tahoe where the two engage in a cat and mouse, table turning game of deceit and duplicity.
Quotes
“Nothing is ever as pure as it seems at first glance; there is always something more complicated to be found when you peel back the unmarred surface of pretty things.”
“Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, despite your best-or worst-intentions.”
“It’s easiest to judge from distance. That’s why the Internet has turned us all into armchair critics, experts at the cold dissection of gesture and syllable, sneering self-righteously from the safety of our screens. There, we can feel good about ourselves, validated that our flaws weren’t as bad as theirs, unchallenged in our superiority. Moral high ground is a pleasant place to preach, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.”
“But I suppose that’s the point of it all, for Vanessa: To throw herself into the world she wants to inhibit in the hopes of forgetting the one in which she really lives. Who am I to say she’s wrong to try? We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see. Maybe it means that we’re crazy, or maybe it means that we’re monsters, or maybe it’s just the world we live in now makes it so hard to separate truth from image from dream.”
“Anything you do in fury’s service feels justifiable; no matter how petty, how small, how nasty or cruel.”
“Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”
“Social media feeds the narcissistic monster that lives within us all, I would think to myself. It feeds it and grows it until the beast takes over and you are left outside the frame, just looking at images of this creature, like everyone else in your feed, wondering what it is that you birthed and why it’s living the life you wish you had.”
“Maybe our greatest strength as human beings is also our greatest weakness, the need to love and be loved.”
“and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.”
“They say DNA is destiny. And probably this is true for those with gift coded in their genes: say, a rare beauty or intelligence, the ability to run a four minute mile or dunk a basketball, or perhaps just innate cunning or insatiable drive. But for the rest of the world, those born without some obvious greatness, it’s not your DNA that will get you ahead; it’s the life you were born into. The opportunities you were (or weren’t) handed on a silver platter. It’s your circumstances.”
“Smarts mean a lot in the world, but good looks even more.”
“I watch and I wait. I study what people have, and where they have it. It’s easy because they show me. Their social media accounts are like windows into their worlds that they’ve flung open, begging me to peer inside and take inventory.”
“In the end, we are all our mothers’ children, no matter how saintly or evil they might be; and the loss of their love is the earthquake that cracks your foundation forever. It’s permanent damage.”
“This is the great horror of life: that mistakes are forever, and cannot be undone. You can never truly go back, even if you want to retrace your steps and take another route. The path has already disappeared behind you.”
“There is no one path in life that is set before you, I’m starting to realize; no one is making your decisions for you.”
“When you’re documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You’re never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”
“Sex—it can be about love, yes. And it’s wonderful when it’s that, and God, baby, I hope that’s what you’ve found. But it’s also a tool. Men use it to prove a point to themselves, about their power to take what they want. You’re just the first rung on the ladder of their world domination. And when that’s the kind of sex you’re having—which is most of the time—you got to make sure that you’re using it as a tool, too. Don’t let yourself be used up by them, all the time believing it’s some kind of equal relationship. Make sure you’re getting just as much out of it as they are.”
“Was it any wonder that people on the wrong side of the glass would eventually decide to take a hammer and break it, reach through and take some of it for themselves?”
My Take
Pretty Things was a roller coaster thrill ride that I whipped through. In the same vein as Gone Girl, Janelle Brown knows how to write a cliff hanging page turner. I love getting caught up in a non-stop, well written thriller and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent reading Pretty Things.
