Pretty Ugly Lies

By: Pamela Crane

Narrated by: Jeff Harding, Lyssa Browne, Ruth Redman

Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

From USA Today best-selling author Pamela Crane comes an unmissable new psychological thriller.

What causes a woman to murder her family?

Jo's idyllic life would make most people jealous. Until one day her daughter is abducted, and the only way to find her is to unravel her dark past. Ellie is a devoted wife...until she discovers the pain of betrayal. Now vengeance is all she can think about. Party girl Shayla knows how to hide her demons. But when she's confronted with a life-shattering choice, it will cost her everything. June knows suffering intimately, though the smile she wears keeps it hidden. Soon, the lives of these four women intersect, and one of them is about to snap.

©2018 Pamela Crane (P)2018 W.F. Howes Ltd

Ugh a couple spoilers

Honestly, the gruesome beginning didn’t detour me. These women? So hard to relate to. I mean being a mom is hard, it can be isolating and sometimes down right depressing but gimme a break!! Your bffs kid is kidnapped and you’re not with her holding her hand and whatever you can do to help? No way. Not believable. None of these women had any idea there had been a kidnapping? And the male narrator is awful. Every single over dramatic sentence sounds like idk, a question or something. Very annoying and distracting.
I only leave full reviews when books are great or terrible. I almost always stick it out, I did with this as well. I do not recommend.

“Anyways”!

The story was dark but mostly well-written and plotted. The wrap-up in the epilogue was a little too pat.
Definitely could have used some copy editing. While it’s non-standard English that’s accepted conversationally in dialogue,the word “anyways” must have been used at least once per chapter, and by each character multiple times. Most of these characters were portrayed as well-educated so the word didn’t make sense. It’s a pet peeve of mine that I hear more and more frequently—not limited to this book.
Narration was spotty. Some good but some very stilted with mispronunciations of even quite common words. It makes me think no one listened to it all the way through before release.

Such drama

Full of drama. Had a hard time distinguishing between the characters. I probably would have enjoyed this one more if I had read the physical copy.

A little difficult to follow with so many characters too

Too many characters to follow but good story overall. I enjoyed the narrative but had to rewind to figure out who was talking.

Tragedy, Love, Life and Family

All of the characters are developed so well that you never get confused about who is doing what. Some great takeaways about life, love and family run throughout the story. I enjoyed the suspense!

A surprise to the end

I never really saw it coming. It’s well written and engulfs you from the first chapter. Great read!

Mixed feelings...

I’ve never left a negative review but this book left me with a bad feeling. I’m not religious - but I was taken aback by how morally wrong the the message was at the conclusion. Wow. Maybe it’s just me....

In addition, I found the motivation of the primary “bad guy” ridiculous and the resolution... well... it was resolved!

Aside from that, I stuck along for the ride. It was entertaining most of the way and the narration was great 👍

Great read

Starts out a little slow while you are being introduced to the characters but if you stick with it it gets better.

Too long - great narrator, mildly interesting

There were too many of the story lines that were not tied together well. DIdn't like the ending.

I felt it was a very dark story

Sometimes it was hard to follow the characters, similar to how a soap opera jumps back and forth