Beautiful Lies (Unger) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
A tightly written thriller.... The action is depicted with satisfying breathlessness.
San Francisco Chronicle


Perfect pitch, characters we can recognize as versions of ourselves.... Lip-smacking good.
Chicago Tribune


Unger's well-crafted, suspenseful debut fiction, in which a bright, resourceful young woman finds her everyday world turned upside down in true Harlan Coben-thriller fashion, is done no favors by this off-kilter audio rendition. The main problem is that reader Lamia sounds a decade younger than the novel's narrator, Ridley Jones. As the book's heroine drifts into and out of jeopardy, fearlessly searching for the truth about her birth and parentage while defying powerful adversaries determined to keep a particularly evil secret, the mood should be noir. Lamia's sound is strictly YA, more girly than gritty. Her performance isn't one note; she makes all the right emotional choices. But she is not vocally versatile enough to do justice to the novel's cast of characters. Asking her to convey the audio image of a rotund, sinister lawyer issuing dire threats, to take one example, is a little like hiring Paris Hilton to stand in for Orson Welles. Not her fault, exactly, if she falls short of the mark.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review) Unger takes readers on a pulse-pounding ride through the Big Apple in this outstanding debut that will please both pace-obsessed thriller fans and those who want to savor the more subtle aspects of character development. —Jenny McLarin
Booklist


A cozy, personable debut about a young New York City journalist who inadvertently begins to unravel her own identity. Ridley Jones's 15 minutes of fame occur when she leaves her East Village apartment one morning to catch a cab and saves a toddler from being hit by a van. Ridley's face is plastered over the news for days, thrilling her New Jersey parents and former fiance Zack, whom she dumped in order to become her own person. Ridley's privacy is further compromised when she receives notes from someone claiming to be her long-lost daughter. Simultaneously, an attractive, rather nosy new neighbor in her building, Jake, turns out to be a PI with all kinds of scary baggage and a bullet scar on his shoulder. He helps connect Ridley's mysterious messages to the case of a missing girl, Jessie Stone, who disappeared in 1972 after the murder of her mother (probably by her boyfriend). Unger effectively builds suspicions around the men in Ridley's life: unknown, duplicitous Jake, who seems to follow her everywhere; obtuse and overprotective Zack, a pediatrician like her father; bitter, damaged older brother Ace, an itinerant drug user estranged from the family who drops hints of their parents' perfidy without evidence; and even Ridley's beloved, dead Uncle Max, who overcame an abusive childhood to make his fortune in real estate and establish a humanitarian agency that shelters mothers with children frightened for their safety. Ridley's parents also come under her scrutiny, since her father served as pediatrician to Jessie as well as to other missing children. The story is told from the perspective of Ridley, who is proud and occasionally spooked to live on her own in the big city. Cleverly handled suspense for chick-lit readers.
Kirkus Reviews