Pretty Guilty Women: A Novel

Detective Ramone is faced with a unique dilemma as he seeks to uncover a murderer-he has too many confessors to the crime and each insist they acted alone. Gina Lamanna's newest offering, Pretty Guilty Women, is buoyed by the wake of other popular thrillers that feature wealthy but troubled women fighting back against oppressive partners. Lamanna's version consists of a series of police interviews with the copious witnesses, followed by short chapters containing that character's contribution to the unspooling storyline. The women in the book are portrayed as angry and powerful in dealing with the men that they are paired who are presented as either completely ineffectual or dangerous. The action takes place in a "closed room" set-up: an elite spa hosting a lavish destination wedding weekend where the murder inconveniently occurs. The main characters are connected by family ties and/or college friendships, all rife with conflict and resentment. Themes include domestic violence, infertility struggles, parental challenges, substance abuse, and resistance to female oppression. These topics have been extensively explored recently in a variety of ways, and it would be a challenge for anyone seeking to present a fresh perspective in an overcrowded and talented field. Lamanna's prior well-loved mystery series are typically more cozy and romance-infused, and that sensibility is apparent here, but it doesn't quite fit the weighty topics she is trying to address. Pretty Guilty Women contains some pulse-raising moments that make it worth the quick time it takes to read, but other contemporary works have already covered this ground-and have done so to greater effect. Thanks to the author and Sourcebooks for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Best friends during their college years, four women gather at the sight of an extravagant wedding by one of them. Having not seen seen or communicated since college, they are not all happy to be there. They each bring their husbands, boyfriends, children. It's like watching a drama unfold. With a homicide detective questioning each of the guests, and those that they brought with them, including the bridal couple. Seems that a man was murdered during the rehearsal dinner, and unfortunately for the detective, there are four confessions. Each confession is said to have been created by that person and that person alone. Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know — and they're not telling. This is a unique take of the lives of these four women , with the menfolk coming in as secondary characters. The book bounces from the detective's interviews, followed by a look at the person who's doing the confessing. This one kept me glued to the pages and I hated putting it down for more than a minute. It's well written and the characters are all flawed in one sense or another. It's not highly suspenseful except for the fact that the reader gets no hint of who the murdered man is. It seems like all the women have a motive for killing the men in their lives. Many thanks to the author / Little, Brown Book Group UK / Netgalley / THE Book Club Reviewer Group (FB) for the digital copy of this psychological crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.