Pretty Ugly Lies by Pamela Crane

Kindle Edition, 234 pages
Published July 18th 2018 by Bloodhound Books
☆☆☆
About the Book: What causes a woman to murder her whole 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. A chilling look at the secrets mothers will hide for the sake of their families, and the gruesome reality of what can break an everyday woman.

Sorry isn’t enough anymore. Sorry can’t fix what’s broken. Sometimes a sacrifice is the only way to start over again. This is one of those times.
I found this book very different to the usual psychological thriller. The plot was extremely fast moving, no time is wasted telling every character's life story which can often get tedious. The story is told from four main viewpoints; Jo, Ellie, Shayla and June. It is focussed on a kidnapping and a murder of a family. There are also the side stories of the families of the four women. While I found the plot line very interesting and tense, the women just whined and complained throughout the book. What could have been a 4 star novel turned to 3, for me, because of that.

My sanity had reached the edge of its threshold and was pouring all over the floor. I was losing it.
It  can be tough with thrillers to really get into the heart of the characters but that is not a problem with this book. All of the characters have interesting backgrounds and stories which all come to light as motives are thrown around. The emotional state of the parents felt raw and real, the strength and weaknesses that flow from them were realistic and helped to make them more rounded charatcters.

In my life, the world was colorblind and I was the color red. No one saw me for who I really was.
Overall, this book is addictive, conniving and fascinating. It pulls you in one direction and then spins you in another; a true rollarcoaster of a read. I was constantly guessing what had happened and continuously getting it wrong. I loved how the narrative played out as well. Just getting to an interesting revelation but instead of revealing it, moving to a different character to keep you interested in the story. It was a brilliant thriller novel that will kept me on the edge of my seat and an ending that quite literally took my breath away.