Read 27:11:23 Review “A gripping page turner. Irresistible” Catriona McPherson BM {great use of common speech habits. Excellent plot. USA country town. Popular culture, pro women’s issues. Good psychology of the main character “Ju” Juliet. American author.

Lori is a writer I know from the Chicago mystery writer groups I used to belong to before moving back to Boston. Her mysteries are not a series, but are standalone mystery-thrillers. Her first book The Black Hour was about a college professor who was shot by a student and returns to the campus the next year. Little Pretty Things is about a young woman who cleans rooms in a motel in her hometown in Indiana. She was a high school track star whose dreams fizzled when her father died during her first year of college. She has to face the past when her former friend and competitor who always managed to beat her returns and is found dead. Written in first person, the self critical, snarky voice of Juliet pulls you along through the story to a satisfying end. With a likable protagonist and well drawn picture of small town life in the Midwest, this is a fun book to read. Try it and enjoy it. Frances McNamara Author of the Emily Cabot Mysteries. ( )

Too much fluff and unnecessary plot lines. Would have served much better as a concise short story. ( )

This is a slow moving book, so if you are just reading for action, don't pick it up. It's hard to believe that Julie, a top track star in high school, would be stuck in a dead-end job cleaning motel rooms ten years after graduation. She has opportunity to consider the circumstances that led to this situation when her former BFF from high school returns to town and is killed. I liked the self-development that Julie goes through when she begins to examine her life from a different perspective and to change her attitude about possibilities. ( )

This is one of those books that sound so good when you read the back, that you buy it and then when you try and read it you discover it is not at all what you expected.
The story C could have been good, it should have been great, but it is so far from good or great. The pacing it at glacial speed, I guess to drag out a story that the reader figures out in the first fifty pages but the dull, boring, dim witted narrator doesn't figure out until literally the second to last page. Julie the narrator was best friends with Maddie, the track star her senior yea roof high school, something happens the are no longer pals and we fast forward 10 years. I won't even bore you with what did happen, because while it should have been and is a relevant occurrence, in the hands of this author, you get the feeling Julie was an unpopular outsider, rather than the second seed on the track team. But she comes of as poor poor pitiful me. This book is as trite as a Megan Abbott book and twice as boring. How could a 300 page book be so slow, dull, and cliched?
This author probably writes a good YA book and maybe that is what this was only it wasn't shelved that way. What I do know is I won't make the mistake of reading another book by this author. ( )