Little White Lies, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
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Series?: Yes
Publisher: Freeform
Release Date: November 6, 2018
Length: 400 pages
Source: ARC
Format: Netgalley
Times Read: Once
Rating: 
.5
“I’m not saying this is Sawyer’s fault,” the prim and proper one said delicately. “But.”
Eighteen-year-old auto mechanic Sawyer Taft did not expect her estranged grandmother to show up at her apartment door and offer her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season. And she definitely never imagined she would accept. But when she realizes that immersing herself in her grandmother’s “society” might mean discovering the answer to the biggest mystery of her life-her father’s identity-she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses, bigger egos, and a whole lot of bless your heart. The one thing she doesn’t expect to find is friendship, but as she’s drawn into a group of debutantes with scandalous, dangerous secrets of their own, Sawyer quickly discovers that her family isn’t the only mainstay of high society with skeletons in their closet. There are people in her grandmother’s glittering world who are not what they appear, and no one wants Sawyer poking her nose into the past. As she navigates the twisted relationships between her new friends and their powerful parents, Sawyer’s search for the truth about her own origins is just the beginning.
Set in the world of debutante balls, grand estates and rolling green hills, Little White Lies combines a charming setting, a classic fish-out-of-water story, and the sort of layered mystery only author Jennifer Lynn Barnes can pull off.
What I Liked: BIG Gilmore Girls vibes in this one, crossed with Gossip Girls of the South with a dash of (tame) Pretty Little Liars.
♥ SO much mystery in this one, and Jennifer Lynn Barnes does mystery SO well. I’ve enjoyed all of her other books, and I was super excited for this one! There are secrets and scandals happening in Sawyer’s new world from the moment she gets there, plus Sawyer brings one of her own–I don’t consider this to be a spoiler because it’s mentioned from the beginning, but Sawyer doesn’t know who her father is, only that her mother got pregnant when she was 17, and Sawyer has a handful of likely suspects.
Obviously I can’t tell you any more about this, but it’s a big part of the book, especially since all of the suspects have kids that are Sawyer’s age that she’s become friends with. Unfortunately, this also takes out most of her dating prospects (unfortunate for me. Sawyer believes that anyone flirting with a teenage girl isn’t worth flirting with).
♥ Secrets on My Skin. A super interesting blog, sort of like of a mashup of Instagram meets Postsecret, run by someone anonymous a’la Gossip Girl. I didn’t have pictures in my copy, but I believe in the finished copies there will be!
♥ The friendships. Sawyer doesn’t move to town planning to make friends, but by the end she’s got a whole group that she loves and can count on.
What I Didn’t: It could probably be about 25% shorter, and the end felt super rushed, with way too many unresolved storylines for my liking. But when I checked Goodreads after finishing, I saw that it’s going to be a series with at least one more book, so I’m okay with the ending now!
⊗ WTF is with all the parents why are they all THE WORST?
Favorite Quotes: “She’d never pressured me to be someone else, never once made me feel like she was anything less than delighted with exactly who I was. That was more than most people could say.”
Pages and Pugs 
Awesome review! It’s about what I would expect from a book like this. It sounds like a nice fun read.
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it definitely is!
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