Review: Pretty Things

Pretty Things by Janelle Brown
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wow I really binged this book haha it's pretty long and I finished it in almost under 24hr XD

It was good! Twists and turns and exciting and wanting to figure out more and more and wondering where it's going to go.

I feel like summing up this book would give too much away haha but basically it's about a smart manipulative con artist girl who wants to get revenge con on this entitled, rich, self obsessed girl she knew back in highschool because of what her family did to her.

I like how a book showed the Instagram influencer lifestyle and internal and external POV of it.

I liked how well the narrative switched from Nina's POV to Vanessa's point of view in the chapters.

The ending was good but I was expecting it the whole time. I think I've rad so many novels at this point it's difficult to really shock me haha but I still enjoyed the whole journey! Ashley/Nina and Vanessa are great characters. Nina is introverted, caring, self aware, manipulative, smart, witty and Vanessa is beautiful, rich, healthy, very Instagram savvy, but pretty dull minded.

I feel like this would make for a better movie than book. Reason in spoiler below.

(view spoiler)[
- I totally called it that Nina's mother and Benny were conning her, saw it from a mile away. I always knew Lachlan's accident was going to be fake. I knew her mom was conning Nina since she started conning men from work and really only seems to care about herself.
- I feel like Vanessa was overthe top sometimes with her dumb innocent perspective on things
- It was a bit much that they murdered Lachlan in the end
- I feel like this would make for a better movie than book. At the end where Nina goes again Vanessa to get a more natural real reaction out of her, it'd be more interesting in film because the watcher wouldn't know if they were for or against eachother now, but in the book you can tell Nina is still on Vanessa's side.
- It was kinda out of character that Vanessa took charge at the end with conning Lachlan
- I wanted a better ending with Nina and Benny, it felt unfinished. Like Benny turned out to be slower and dumber and more medicated so Nina was uninterested? Was she ever in love with him? Are they just going to be friends then? idk... I felt like Nina should have gotten him off of all the medication and turned out that he was fine to begin and his family just felt like they needed to take some form of action with him to change him but there was actually nothing wrong with him, and they lived happily ever after :P (hide spoiler)]

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