Title: Pretty Guilty Women
Author: Gina LaManna
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Release Date: September 3, 2019
Pages: 336
Book Source:NetGalley
“Four Women. Four Confessions. One Murder.
Something has gone terribly wrong at the Banks wedding. A man is dead. Four different women rush to offer confessions, each insisting that they committed the crime — alone.
Ginger is holding her family together by a thread, and this wedding weekend is not the fabulous getaway she anticipated.
Kate has enough money to buy her way out of anything. Well, almost anything.
Emily can’t shake her reputation or her memories, and she’s planning to drown this whole vacation in a bottle.
Lulu’s got ex-husbands to spare, and another on the way — as soon as she figures out what the devil the current husband is up to behind her back.
Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know — and they’re not telling. This page-turning novel explores the depths of friendship and the truths we love to ignore.” – Amazon
Kim’s Review
Gina LaManna really knows how to write about female friendships. I could see myself or at least one friend in each of the female characters. The idea of college friends falling out of touch with each other, only to come together for a wedding, and have all the young adult feelings come to the surface once again, is something that happens every day. And LaManna captures it perfectly. The insecurities, drama, competitiveness, and more comes to light under LaManna’s wonderful character portrayals.
And LaMana doesn’t just write about middle aged women well. She also does a fantastic job with children, teens, and older women. I don’t know if she meant to do this, but the way she incorporated the maiden, mother, and crone aspects into the book was wonderful. Every stage of a woman’s life is magical and has its own problems which LaManna demonstrates perfectly.
As for the thriller part of the story it was not as intense as others that I’ve read, but it still had me turning the page to see what would happen next. Although I was interested to find out who the killer was, and how the murder came about, I found myself drawn more to the drama that was playing out between the women. In ways I feel like this could just as easily be classified as Women’s Fiction as a Thriller.
I was content with how the conclusion came together. Although I guessed at parts of it, there were still a few surprises. I will say the epilogue is where the ending of this book really shined. It left me with various emotions that I had to sort through, and made me wonder if I would have handled the situation the same way.
Pretty Guilty Women is the first book I’ve read by LaManna, and when I went to her website to read about her other books, I was happy to find four more series of hers that I am going to be checking out.
The Lola Pink Mysteries, The Hex Files, Magic & Mixology, and The Lacey Luzzi series all look likes books I would really enjoy.
Let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any of LaManna and your thoughts!
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