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LITTLE PRETTY THINGS
by Lori Rader-Day
Seventh Street Books, July 2015
285 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1633880044


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

On the heels of her first novel, which received much praise and award nominations, Lori Rader-Day has come out with another atmospheric page turner.

The novel's protagonist is, by probably her own description, a loser. Ten years after high school graduation, Juliet Townsend is cleaning hotel rooms in the slightly seedy Mid-Night Inn, a roadside motel that desperately clings to the one star it once received in a guidebook.

Juliet's one claim to fame was as a high school track team member, but even then she was always in second place, with friend Maddy Bell as the star, the constant first-place winner. Maddy returns to their small Indiana town on the eve of their high school reunion, radiating success and wearing a huge engagement ring. But the next day Maddy is dead - killed in the very hotel where Juliet works. Maddy has left behind one clue for Juliet, and it leads back to their high school days. Not everything, it seems, was as Juliet remembered it.

Little pretty things refers to the small items that guests leave behind in the hotel rooms and which Juliet picks up and stows in a drawer at home—a single earring, a spiral paperclip, a sparkling hair barrette. But little pretty things also refers to the girls that Juliet, as a substitute teacher, coaches at the high school. These girls, with their long hair and tiny waists, all seem prettier than when Juliet went to school. But they, too, harbor secrets. It may be too late for Juliet to save Maddy, but can she save others?

Rader-Day has a way of pulling us in, immediately and totally. It's not so much that we care about Maddy and her murderer, but whether Juliet will finally end her losing streak. This is a taut novel, filled with suspense, heartbreak and redemption. It definitely deserves a spot on your summer reading list.

§ Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.

Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, May 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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