• Beautiful Lies

  • A Novel
  • By: Lisa Unger
  • Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
  • Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (688 ratings)

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Beautiful Lies  By  cover art

Beautiful Lies

By: Lisa Unger
Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
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Publisher's summary

If Ridley Jones had slept 10 minutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the beautiful lie she used to call her life. She would still be the privileged daughter of a doting father and a loving mother. Her life would still be perfect - with only the tiny cracks of an angry junkie for a brother and a charming drunk with shady underworld connections for an uncle to mar the otherwise flawless whole.

But that's not what happened. Instead, those inconsequential decisions lead her to perform a good deed that puts her in the right place at the right time to unleash a chain of events that brings a mysterious package to her door - a package which informs her that her entire world is a lie.

Suddenly forced to question everything she knows about herself and her family, Ridley wanders into dark territory she never knew existed, where everyone in her life seems like a stranger. She has no idea who's on her side and who has something to hide - even, and maybe especially, her new lover, Jake, who appears to have secrets of his own.

Sexy and fast-paced, Beautiful Lies is a true literary thriller with one of the freshest voices and heroines to arrive in years. Lisa Unger takes us on a breathtaking ride in which every choice Ridley makes creates a whirlwind of consequences that are impossible to imagine....

©2006 Lisa Unger (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Unger takes readers on a pulse-pounding ride through the Big Apple in this outstanding debut that will please both pace-obsessed thriller fans and those who want to savor the more subtle aspects of character development." (Booklist)
"With breathless speed, Unger is off on an action-packed journey of treachery and intrigue....The premise, that there is a dark side to the safe haven law, is deep as well as clever, and Unger plays it out thrillingly." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Beautiful Lies

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    221
  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
    149
  • 2 Stars
    53
  • 1 Stars
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Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
    118
  • 3 Stars
    50
  • 2 Stars
    14
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    10
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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    155
  • 4 Stars
    117
  • 3 Stars
    73
  • 2 Stars
    28
  • 1 Stars
    14

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Give it a chance

I put off buying this book on several occasions because of the readers reviews and finally relented after reading the writer recommendation for the third time. I will admit that if you are an action film type and prefer everyone to state their intention in less than 5 words using no more than two syllables per word, then you will hate this book. If however you actually like reading books, then you will appreciate the authors efforts to paint the scene and express her thoughts and feelings. Although I feel 5 stars is too generous, I wanted to express how strongly I disagree with the other reviews. I am an avid book reader (both normal and audio) and thoroughly enjoyed the book. I strongly recommend it and upon completion immediately bought the follow up book Sliver of Truth.

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39 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Surprised and Impressed

I really liked this book. I kept checking the plot summary at the beginning to see if I was listening to the right book. It takes a lot of interesting twists and turns, once in awhile I had to back track 30 sec or a minute just to make sure I was following. I'm glad all the pieces fell into place seamlessly for me as the reader because I ended up really liking the book. Great plot.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

great book

I loved this book and hated to see it end! Very entertaining from beginning to end. Would highly recommend this listen.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Sloowwwwwww

This book is slow - slow as a two legged dog with a thick curly black coat of medium length that is starting to grey a bit and whose perfectly round hazel eyes suggest somehow that he is wiser than he lets on. A dog that in his youth could chase a rabbit for nearly a mile with unyielding strength and determination like a hungry prize fighter . . .

Get the idea? The writer's over-use of descriptives and simile bog this book down to the point of being unlistenable. Detail is good when it paints a scene that is relevant to moving the story line or understanding the characters. Hers don't do either, they just drone on without pupose. Skip it.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Good story, but toooooooo long

I am ordinarily a fan of the unabridged version of audio books, however this one has me rethinking this approach. The story was interesting and well conceived, but the author often goes into such minute detail about seemingly unimportant details and/or tangents. I think this particular audiobook would have been better in the abridged version.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

NOt bad for 1st yr.college

Very poor. As others said full of cliches. The figures of speech were sophomoric, often puerile, even to include clumsy mixed metaphore. Please tell the author that there are no Bibles in Catholic confessionals. She very much needs an editor.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Misery for Me

I am in complete agreement with the review by Catalyn. I couldn't wait for this book to end - it was a painful experience. I actually started to wince with the growing certainty that after almost every event I would be subjected to some self-absorbed discourse about some boring aspect of Ridley's life in ruin. The heroine was a pathetic female who tiresomely wavered between tears, denial, and (when the plot needed to move forward) some determination for the truth.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

really great listen

loved the voice--both of the author and the narator. fully engaging.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Good premise but...

This book had a very good premise but it never really developed into a great story. At times it was too wordy with too much description and at other times, conflict was wrapped up too quickly and neatly. It seemed like all the characters were behaving because of their reaction to love but so much was left unsaid. Why did Zack become so passionately involved with such illegal activity? Why did he turn on Ridley? What was so bad in Ace's life to make him turn to addiction? Why was Ridley's father so steadfastly naive? And why did Ridley herself make such poor choices? The characters seemed to have extreme behaviors but we never really learned enough about them to understand their actions.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Boring Books.

Beautiful Lies is a dreary attempt to set an old style gothic romance into a gritty New York setting. It doesn’t work. The first-person narrator, a woman improbably named Ridley, gets caught up in the mystery of finding out her real identity after she rescues a young boy from a busy street and her story is plastered across the news. Complete with the obligatory mysterious handsome man who the heroine falls in love with and then begins to fear, the novel leans heavily on the 18th century writer’s technique of directly addressing the reader to the point that the listener simply wants to pull out the earphones so she will stop talking at you. The narrator is so self-absorbed, righteous and lacking in any perspective save her interest in herself that it is difficult to believe that she could be the successful freelance writer she is supposed to be. The other characters are as flat as paper dolls and the predictable plot dead ends with our heroine simply having the mystery explained to her by one of the bad guys and her parents. Alas, this thriller wanna be is not worth a listen.

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4 people found this helpful