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83 of 94 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
What a Stinker, December 23, 2009
This review is from: Beautiful Lies (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) (Mass Market Paperback)
I had such high hopes. This book had starred reviews which were apparently (forgive me) "beautiful lies." I enjoy a good thriller, even if it isn't high art. But this isn't thrilling. It's slow. And the writing is belabored. Lisa Unger, the author, can't let a noun go by without attaching three or four adjectives or descriptive dependent clauses. People don't just sit on a couch. They walk across the warped, green, linoleum floor and bend their creaking knees to lower themselves, tiredly, to the velvet red couch bought second-hand on a street corner in Williamsburg on a rainy Thursday when no one wanted to be up but the sun was too bright to do otherwise. See what I'm saying? The main character enters a cheap pizza joint and the story stops for an entire page while we read all about the paneling, the floors, every person sitting in the place, and the posture of the proprietress. In other hands, maybe this would be interesting, but here it is like you're trapped in a conversation where the other person REFUSES TO GET TO THE POINT. Maddening. Do not waste your time.
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112 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding! I predict a bestseller!!, April 18, 2006
WOW!!! I predict a wonderful future for Lisa Unger's first novel, "Beautiful Lies." I forecast its presence on the NY Times Bestseller List for many a moon. However, unlike a number of successful bestselling novels, this one is well written. It also has a most original plot and a quirky, three dimensional protagonist, as well as realistic minor characters. And, oddly enough, there are no real villains in a story where bad things certainly happen. In the novel her main character, Ridley Jones, says/thinks "there are no heroes or villains in real life, 'only good and bad choices.'
Our gal Ridley is a thirty-something freelance writer who does work for Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, etc., so she is pretty successful. But rents are high in New York City and even successful freelancers are hard pressed at times to come up with the rent. Ridley does not have this problem. She inherited a healthy sum of money from her uncle, "who wasn't actually an uncle," but her father's best friend. He absolutely adored her. This money cushions her against potential poverty and allows her freedom from financial worries. And "freedom" is a concept of immense importance to her.
Ridley's "fairly uneventful life" is turned upside down one morning...the morning she gains a bit more than her share of 15 minutes of fame. She sees a toddler about to be hit by a speeding truck and leaps into the street to save the boy. Fortuitously...or not, a photographer is on the scene and Ridley, in full action, appears on the cover of the local papers. The story is picked up by the morning talk shows where she and her family bask in the glory of her brief but bright spotlight. They have no idea what her moment of fame will bring her...like an envelope in the mail containing a note and an old photograph. The faded photo is of a young woman - who could be Ridley's double, a man and a little girl who resembles Ridley Jones as a little girl. The note includes a phone number and the question, "Are you my daughter?"
Unhinged, our heroine seeks reassurance from her doting father, a successful pediatrician, and her mother, a controlling, uptight woman. They slough off the incident and tell her that some wacko is having a joke at her expense, insisting that they are her birth parents. Still uncertain, she looks for her older brother, a drug addict who lives on he streets, and when she finds him he makes some disturbing comments which fuel her confusion.
Then she meets her handsome and mysterious new neighbor, Jake, a sculptor and a real hottie. Her life will never be the same.
Set in Manhattan's East Village, just a few blocks from where I live, Ms. Unger really brings the neighborhood to life with her wonderful descriptive writing. "Beautiful Lies," a taut psychological thriller is 375 pages long and I read it in 2 sittings. It is truly UNPUTDOWNABLE!!! I can't recommend a book more highly than that!
JANA
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47 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The Universe Doesn't Like Secrets,", May 17, 2006
I truly enjoyed this book. It wasn't necessarily about the story, although I was riveted, and compelled to turn pages to learn the outcome. Plain and simple, it was about the writing. Lisa Unger's style is refreshing and original. I felt like she, through the voice of her protagonist, was in the room with me, telling me this story.
Beautiful Lies is a first-person account of a young woman named Ridley Jones, who contemplates a single act, and the events leading up to this act, that change her life forever. She became a momentary celebrity after saving a child from being hit by a car. Because her heroic and selfless deed was inadvertently videotaped, the world witnessed it on local and even national television, and her exposure enabled the truth of her identity to be exposed as well.
Throughout the tale, Unger/Jones "talks" to her reader. "I know what you're thinking," she often writes. At first I found this a little annoying, but ultimately, I had to admit in each case, she did know what I was thinking. She had me that hooked. Throughout the story, she interjects little gems of wisdom regarding family dynamics where her parents and brother (her biological parents and biological brother???) are concerned, which had me nodding my head and saying "yes!" One of my favorite lines in the book is: "It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present." Ultimately, the mysteries are revealed and all the characters--particularly the parents, the mysterious uncle, drug-addict brother, sexy man upstairs, ex-boyfriend and his mother, and the mob-linked laywer--are relevant and satisfying.
This is a great, fast read and I recommend it for readers who appreciate good story telling and down to earth characters.
Michele Cozzens, Author of A Line Between Friends and The Things I Wish I'd Said.
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