BOOKISH FRIDAY: “PRETTY THINGS”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which we  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists! What a great way to spend a Friday!

Today’s feature is a recent download:  Pretty Things, by Janelle Brown.

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Book Beginning:  (Prologue)

When a body goes down in Lake Tahoe, they say, it does not rise again.  The frigid temperature of the lake, its vast depths, conspire to keep bacteria at bay.  What once was human fails to decompose.  Instead, the body is doomed to drift along the lake bed, in perpetual limbo;  just more organic matter joining the mysterious menagerie that lives in Tahoe’s uncharted depths.

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Friday 56:  The whole thing took less than a week.  This is what the Internet has given my generation:  the ability to play God.  We can make man in our own image, birth an entire human being out of nothing at all.

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Synopsis:  Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.

Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.

Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

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Would you keep reading? 

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