Book Review: ‘Pretty Dead Things: A Novel’ By Lilian West

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The book is in stores on Tuesday, December 10th from Crooked Lane. Click on the link to buy a copy. https://amzn.to/3V5HEQG

Cora has moved from California to the small midwestern town of Hickory Falls, to get married to Elliott, a dentist, who has lived here his whole life. It’s one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone and knows their business. She has plenty of free time and goes to an estate sale and buys a jar of baubles for five dollars. When she goes through it she finds buttons, marbles and wedding rings. Curious as to how they got in the jar, she starts investigating them and it leads her to the Shaw family, and to the middle daughter, Clarity, whose family has a checkered, scandalous past. Her mother vanished one day while out gardening and was seen again. The rings belonged to her and now Cora is going around town asking questions, doing research and pissing people off, who think the past should stay buried. The novel goes back and forth to the early 50s and we learn the backstory of the Shaw family which rotates with today and Cora’s search, which leads to a shocking reveal. A solid duel-timeline nove, with some well-timed twists. Not the best novel of the year, but certainly not the worst.