Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Pretty Guilty Women by Gina LaManna is a quick and easy read with a nod to Big Little Lies. Ideal if you are looking for a light hearted book to read.

It's the wedding of the year, except that isn't the focus of the story. What is though is that a man has been killed.

Each of the first four chapters starts with a different woman confessing to the murder of this man, and they all say they acted alone.

So just who is lying and what on earth is the truth.

We slowly discover what happened in the lead up to the murder from the points of view of a variety of characters.

Tensions were running high, there are other secrets to be revealed and well i didn't guess any of the ending.

I was completely hooked though on discovering the truth.

I'm not completely sure i liked any of the leading ladies but they were certainly interesting and intriguing enough to keep me reading.

Really gripping story that kept me on my toes.

Thank you to Sphere and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily,

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

Haven’t read a murder in ages and this was exactly what I was in the mood for. Captivated from the prologue, I loved it. Reminded me of the Stephanie Plum books which I love.

The wedding Of the year is being hosted at Serenity Resort

Amongst them are four women, good friends of the bride. All harbouring their own secret

Twenty four hours later, a fed body turns up. Each of the four women confess to the murder...but why???

This book is absolutely perfect for fans of big little lies.

This book was a great read with a satisfying ending and I can just seen it on our screens soon.

This book was brilliant and if I hadn’t have been suffering with migraines all week I feel like this would’ve been a book I read in one sitting!

4 college friends are brought back together to attend a wedding, but it soon becomes clear that the wedding will not be the main focus of the story.

All 4 women were close friends in college, spending al of their time together, but for one reason or another they just haven’t seen each other, some because that’s just life & others because there is a long standing fall out going in because Emily kissed Gingers ex boyfriend.

The book focuses on 3 of the 4 college friends and Lulu, a woman in her 70’s who is on husband number 5 and they’re all hoping to get different things from the holiday.

Emily is single, she’s a closet alcoholic and goes to therapy for reasons that haven’t been explained, she just sees the holiday as a way to reconnect with old friends and be around people who don’t yet know all about what happened when they left college.

Ginger is still married to her high school sweetheart, they have 3 children together and are only just making ends meet, they’ve saved for months to be able to attend the wedding and Ginger just wants to relax and enjoy everything the hotel has to offer.

Kate is going through a rocky relationship, she’s TTC, they’re having problems, it’s all she can think about but her boyfriends heart just isn’t in it anymore, in fact he ends the relationship when they arrive and Kate spends the week lashing out and then learning to accept her new life.

Lulu is just a classy old lady who is there for all of the girls at different times within the book whilst also trying to work out what’s happening with husband number 5, he’s hiding something, she just can’t work out what!

A man is dead and all 4 women confess to the crime, parts of the story are told in interview form with detective Ramone, whilst the rest of it shows us what the ladies are getting up to whilst on holiday.

This story deals with a lot, domestic violence, loss of a child, kidnap, coming of age. And I can not recommend it enough!

I enjoyed this book and the tangled web of confessions. At times there was a little too much going on, but it was enjoyable. I can imagine it being a very successful screenplay.

What a tangled web we weave when we decide to deceive. 4 women, friends since school days, all admit to murdering one man. Quite a complex story. It changes from the women and the police. Quite an interesting book, but I did not find that it connected easily. Enjoyed the read, thank you to TBC review and NetGalley for letting me read this review copy..

I really enjoyed the unique plot of this book, a tale of old college friends nicely tied up with a murder mystery. The dead isn’t revealed until close to the end and so it’s a unusual treat of a double mystery, with an even bigger surprise at the end! Very nicely done and very much enjoyed.

PRETTY GUILTY WOMEN is a psychological crime suspense fiction novel by Gina LaManna.

Four women, college friends are reunited at the luxurious Serenity Resort on the Californian coast for the classy extravagant wedding of the year for one of their women college friend’s … when something goes horribly wrong . . .

Ginger is an overworked, mother of three who's barely holding the family together when she learns a secret about her daughter that could ruin everything. She worked double shifts to be able to afford to fly a family of five to the wedding.

Lulu is a wealthy senior retiree with four ex-husbands, and now suspects that her current husband might be planning to leave her.

Emily had been a preschool teacher and has been through such hardships and is struggling to recover with the help of a bottle of wine. Emily and Ginger no longer speak due to an old feud since

Kate is a classy, elegant and bossy powerhouse lawyer with her life in order, except for the one

In college, fifteen years ago, Emily, Whiney, Kate and Ginger had been best of friends. Kate lives in New York, Whitney in California, Ginger in Minnesota and Emily in Chicago. They haven’t kept in contact much anymore, so this wedding offers them the chance to reunite.

Each of these women all have secrets that they would do anything to protect.

Just twenty-four hours later, at the rehearsal dinner a man is found dead at the hotel. During the investigation, each of these women confess to the crime, insisting they acted alone. The police know they're lying, but why?

Why would four women confess to the same murder?

Only they know the answer…and they are not talking.

This is a well written and interesting dramatic read, and the reader is kept glued to the story as both the and the killer are not identified until the end of the book. All the characters are flawed and each have their own baggage and coping mechanisms to deal with their problems. There are many twists and turns in the story, but the central theme throughout the story is the bond between mother and child.

Many thanks to the author, Little, Brown Book Group UK , Netgalley and THE Book Club Reviewer Group (FB) for my digital copy.

When the rich decide to arrange a wedding, they go big and the DeBleu/Banks is definitely a grand wedding fiesta. A week-long celebration in a fancy spa hotel, surrounded by friends and family, who can all seemingly afford to quaff champagne like most people drink water. Of course, that doesn’t mean there are no dramas and as with any good weddings, this one is certainly full of them.

One thing does become evident very quickly though. A man is dead and there seems to be a line of people queuing up to confess.


Lulu Franc is 68 and married to Pierce Banks, the uncle of the groom. Lulu is the first to confess to a man’s untimely death.

Is this because she senses there are issues in her marriage? Issues she cannot resolve and has a very real fear that her husband is about to leave her? After all, Lulu should be able to sense when a marriage is failing; she has already been married four times before settling down with Pierce. Perhaps it is Pierce she has murdered in a fit of rage?

Cindy Anderson is a bartender at the wedding and she does admit to believing that Lulu could be calculating enough to murder, not that she has met her before, but after 10 years in the job, she knows she can read people well.

It seems that during drunken conversations with not just Cindy but also others at the bar, Lulu confesses to the fact that she believes her husband no longer loves her and may be planning to leave her. Did this cause anger to bubble under the surface enough to want to kill someone?

Ginger Holly Alder, mother of three, and married to Frank, is a friend of Whitney DeBleu from college.

Frazzled and bitter from a life as a hectic parent trying to keep their heads above water, it seems that Ginger is struggling at every hurdle. Her patience with both the kids and her husband seems to have run its cause and her unpleasant mood seems to run on a very short fuse.

Is she capable of murdering someone? It would appear she believes so.

Emily Brown, another friend of the bride and disliked by Ginger, then confesses to pulling the trigger that kills a man.

Emily seems like the secretive type. Perhaps that is why the mysterious man on the plane is drawn to her but then things get complicated when they find out they are both off to the same wedding function.

Did these complications add to Emily’s already unforgiving actions that caused her and Ginger to fall out years ago? Did this cause her to flip, become unstable and murder someone?

Lawyer, Kate Cross, is also claiming to have killed a man while staying at the Serenity Spa and Resort for the Debleu/Banks wedding.

Kate is rich and successful and to the outside world, she looks happy. Behind closed doors however, she is completely miserable. She is so desperate for a child that it is all she can think about and it is causing a rift between her and her boyfriend Max. It seems the saying; ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ is true for Kate at least.

Who however was killed still hasn’t been revealed, or whether in fact, it is just the one murder. You see, they all mention a man died but is it the same one?

Whitney DeBleu is meant to be getting married this week to the man of her dreams but it seems that things are not going quite to plan. Perhaps in an attempt to rekindle friendships she has invited her three closest friends from college – Emily, Kate, and Ginger – but was that a mistake?

There is an abundance of secrets floating around at this wedding making it difficult to keep up with who hates who, who is dating who, and who has been dumped by whom. Add into the mix a good dose of jealousy and the murderer could be absolutely anyone.

Someone is lying, but whom?

Something happened to cause someone to bubble over with enough rage to kill. Who however was killed remains a mystery until the very end which makes trying to guess the murderer impossible – a very clever way to write a novel though.

It seems that money can buy opulence and get you to leverage for the social pages of glossy magazines, but it cannot stop drama and death from knocking on the door.

For those that enjoyed Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, you will love this.

Welcome to the Banks wedding, where an unnamed man has been murdered, and four different women confess to committing the murder.

Lulu has a collection of ex-husbands, and feels her current husband is planning to leave her.

Emily is an alcoholic and trying to forget everything that has happened to her.

Kate is a successful lawyer who has everything money can buy except for a partner and a baby.

Ginger’s family is growing apart, and attending the wedding is supposed to remedy this

How killed the unnamed man? Why are these friends all confessing to the murder? Their confessions and associated stories are contradicting and confusing.

I found this an enjoyable read that was intriguing and well written. It was an easy, enjoyable read.

Thank you to TBC Reviewer group for my copy of this novel

Best friends during their college years, four women gather at the sight of an extravagant wedding by one of them. Having not seen seen or communicated since college, they are not all happy to be there.

They each bring their husbands, boyfriends, children. It's like watching a drama unfold. With a homicide detective questioning each of the guests, and those that they brought with them, including the bridal couple.

Seems that a man was murdered during the rehearsal dinner, and unfortunately for the detective, there are four confessions. Each confession is said to have been created by that person and that person alone.

Why would they confess to the same murder? Only they know — and they're not telling.

This is a unique take of the lives of these four women , with the menfolk coming in as secondary characters. The book bounces from the detective's interviews, followed by a look at the person who's doing the confessing. This one kept me glued to the pages and I hated putting it down for more than a minute.

It's well written and the characters are all flawed in one sense or another. It's not highly suspenseful except for the fact that the reader gets no hint of who the murdered man is. It seems like all the women have a motive for killing the men in their lives.

Many thanks to the author / Little, Brown Book Group UK / Netgalley / THE Book Club Reviewer Group (FB) for the digital copy of this psychological crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

I completely enjoyed this book, 4 women confessing to a murder and one detective trying to untangle the knots and get to the truth.

4 best friends in college were no longer best of friends as one single act had broken them up. Each of the 4 have had problems in life but wanted a week to relax and enjoy. Add to them a single mother and a worried septuagenarian and a potboiler of a book was made, filled with regrets and new beginnings.

My first book by author Gina LaManna, I found it a light hearted read but filled with enough mystery to keep me engrossed in their lives. The chapters started with the cop taking the statements of the witnesses and then giving me the backstory, which I found to be an interesting concept.

Different points of view gave me the lives of the women and the sequence of events leading to the murder from different angles. My niggles too popped up. Some scenes were clichéd. Depths of friendship could have explored more.

Overall, it was a great read, it diverted my mind when I am not well. I liked it.

A luxury resort, a society wedding and murder. Enjoyable suspense with a strong but flawed cast of characters, hiding plenty of secrets, and a twisty, fast moving pace. An engaging, quick read.

Three college friends meet up at a luxurious Serenity Spa and Resort in California for another friend's wedding. Their friendship has mostly fallen apart but nevertheless, they're making their way to the wedding celebrations that are supposed to take one whole week - Whitney is getting married in the right way, no?
However, it immediately becomes clear that a man has been killed at the resort and along with Lulu, related by marriage to the groom and befriended at the hotel, all the women claim to have killed him. Why? What has happened?

Each of the characters is different, they face different challenges and I liked this variety, even when I couldn't connect with them as much as I'd like to. I mean, they were really interesting, normal characters, they kept supporting each other when it was needed, even with their friendship disintegrating over the years, but they simply felt too repetitive, and I think the author could have written them in a sharper way, instead of making them so unhappy with all their shortcomings in life.
Ginger is married to Frank, they have three children and their family life is rather exhausting, and money is also short supply. She has to do extra shifts at a hotel she's working in to be able to attend the wedding, and her relationship with her teenage daughter Elsie is unravelling. Emily Brown is trying to come to terms with a dramatic past, has a drink problem and is the one to have sex with a man she has only met on the plane. Her friendship with Ginger has been jeopardized years ago, when something happened. Kate Cross is, on the surface, a happy, successful lawyer with no problems, a partner in a New York firm and has a great boyfriend. Under the surface though it looks totally different, her boyfriend Maximilian Banks dumps her right after arrival to the Resort, in reception, after years of trying for a baby he has enough. They all get to know Lulu at the hotel. Lulu, married for the fifth time, loves her husband with all her heart but she's afraid he's going to leave her for another woman. The truth is different.
All the women are different, but all have problems, troubles and keep secrets, trying to live up to the expectations and not wanting to admit to each other that their lives are not beds of roses.

I am a new reader of Gina LaManna, so I didn't know what to except, though I was hoping for something Liane Moriarty - worthy (as stated in the premise and why I actually requested this book). And yes, the book started brilliantly, and I was incredibly intrigued how it's going to develop, however it quickly went downhill. It started to be repetitive and there was actually nothing happening, it felt flat and as if the idea run out. Yes, there are similarities between these books but let's be honest, "Big Little Lies" is on absolutely different level.

There were some moments that made me nod my head, as they were so relatable, and some that made me smile, especially the banter between Ginger and her daughter, and the interviews between the Detective and the characters - they were, I think, the best parts of the book, thanks to the characters and the way they approached them.

Nevertheless, it was a quick, entertaining read, a story filled with bigger and smaller dramas, lies, unconditional love, abuse, friendship and being ready to sacrifice a lot. The friendship is very honestly portrayed, with all the ups and downs, grudges and rivalries.

A quick and easy read, not particularly well written and rather predictable. I like the concept of the murder victim not being revealed till the very end, but it was clumsily executed and felt almost grotesque in places. I didn't find the story either suspenseful or thrilling.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the Little Brown publishers for the ARC.

The description for this is spot on! Sharp, twisty and very different - and I completely loved it!

Four women arrive to attend a wedding; not just any wedding - this one is in a luxury spa resort and features a full week of celebrations. Three of them went to college with the bride, and this will be a good opportunity to catch up with each other. They soon make the acquaintance of the fourth and end up entangled in the discovery of a body . . .

This is a stunning read! Completely different to any other I have read lately and there is no way of knowing who is being truthful and who isn't. Beginning with the detective in charge asking question of each of them separately, we find out their backgrounds as the book progresses. All of them have very different lives and it's a well-planned story which drew me in from the beginning; it's also written in such an easy style that I just seemed to race through the pages, eager to find out what happened next. There are several genres in this one, and the author does each and every one of them justice and I have definitely added Gina LaManna to my list of authors to watch out for. A cracking story and a book I savoured all the way through. It brought no disappointments and everything was beautifully finished off by the final page. An awesome read which I'm very happy to recommend, and also give a full five stars!

My thanks to publisher Little, Brown Book Group for my copy via NetGalley. As always, this is my honest, original and unbiased review.

I have rather mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it was an easy and fairly enjoyable read. However, on the other, I couldn't help but feel it was a rehashing of stories we've already seen before.

Starting at a wedding, we quickly learn that there has been a murder. A murder that four women all claim to have commited. We then go back in time and across police interviews to gradually uncover the truth of what really happened.

If I had read this book without having read it's predecessors (mainly Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies) then I may have found the style of this book more engaging... However, since I have read the former, this ended up feeling a little like fan fiction, and I struggled to maintain interest. Not a bad effort, but I just feel a more original story may have been more successful.