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A review by kezerus
Pretty Guilty Women by Gina LaManna
dark
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
College friends meeting up = one doesn't talk in the book at all, besides a tiny phone call at the start to give context + random ladies added to group. Murder mystery = there wasn't one. For the first 80% of the book there was a mention at the start of each chapter to manufacture suspense, and that's the only reminder what this book was promised to be about. The novel is actually about sad women meeting other women and realising everyone is sad with their own problems so let's be friends and talk about them and think in our head most of the time because nothing happens at all. That's the book, honestly. When everything suddenly comes to head with the murder...the mystery that the whole book led up to instantly solves itself. I expected a trashy read, but I'm not the target audience of older women. I didn't have mothers relation of wanting two different college friends I re-met yesterday to have intimate talks with my teenage daughter, and couldn't understand why these nearly forty year old women were comparing and lowkey shaming when all of them first had sex?
It just isn't a well written book - people would say bye to each other (when just meeting after decades / first time ever) for a valid reason to then instantly offer to go somewhere else with them, the problems in the women own life's either didn't exist or it would be them flip flopping how they felt towards the thing the whole time, since there wasn't actually a plot. One time, the ladies are all sitting together and one randomly blurts a worry she thought of for the first time right that second, another lady responds saying she should make a life changing phone call that second, the first lady goes away and does just that RIGHT THEN, to then rejoin the group where they are talking about the same thing as before (like the group was frozen in time) and then no one asks the woman about the phone call AT ALL. EVER. Yeah, that example sums up what the book consists of.
It just isn't a well written book - people would say bye to each other (when just meeting after decades / first time ever) for a valid reason to then instantly offer to go somewhere else with them, the problems in the women own life's either didn't exist or it would be them flip flopping how they felt towards the thing the whole time, since there wasn't actually a plot. One time, the ladies are all sitting together and one randomly blurts a worry she thought of for the first time right that second, another lady responds saying she should make a life changing phone call that second, the first lady goes away and does just that RIGHT THEN, to then rejoin the group where they are talking about the same thing as before (like the group was frozen in time) and then no one asks the woman about the phone call AT ALL. EVER. Yeah, that example sums up what the book consists of.