| | |  | Amazon Kindle | Home » » » Beautiful Lies: A Novel | | | | | | | Description: | | If Ridley Jones had slept ten minutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the beautiful lie she used to call her life. She would still be the privileged daughter of a doting father and a loving mother. Her life would still be perfect—with only the tiny cracks of an angry junkie for a brother and a charming drunk with shady underworld connections for an uncle to mar the otherwise flawless whole.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, those inconsequential decisions lead her to perform a good deed that puts her in the right place at the right time to unleash a chain of events that brings a mysterious package to her door—a package which informs her that her entire world is a lie.
Suddenly forced to question everything she knows about herself and her family, Ridley wanders into dark territory she never knew existed, where everyone in her life seems like a stranger. She has no idea who’s on her side and who has something to hide—even, and maybe especially, her new lover, Jake, who appears to have secrets of his own.
Sexy and fast-paced, Beautiful Lies is a true literary thriller with one of the freshest voices and heroines to arrive in years. Lisa Unger takes us on a breathtaking ride in which every choice Ridley makes creates a whirlwind of consequences that are impossible to imagine . . . .
AN INTERNATIONAL BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH SELECTION
A featured alternate selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Book-of-the-Month Club, Mystery Guild, and Rhapsody Book Club.
Also available as a Random House AudioBook, a Large Print edition, and an eBook.
From the Hardcover edition. | | | Product Details: | | | Average Customer Rating:
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Average Customer Review:
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84 of 95 found the following review helpful:
 What a StinkerDec 23, 2009
By Aaron Neptune
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.
112 of 130 found the following review helpful:
 Outstanding! I predict a bestseller!!Apr 18, 2006
By Jana L. Perskie
"ceruleana"
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
47 of 55 found the following review helpful:
"The Universe Doesn't Like Secrets,"May 18, 2006
By Michele Cozzens
"www.michelecozzens.com"
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.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
The Most Annoying Main Character EverAug 11, 2010
By Olga Bezhanova
I liked Lisa Unger's Fragile: A Novel, so I decided to check out her first novel, Beautiful Lies. Gosh, what a disappointment! The main character of this novel is the most immature, self-centered and annoying thirty-something you could ever imagine. You'd be hard pressed to find a 12-year-old as immature and bratty as Ridley.
Ridley calls herself a writer, even though she never really writes anything. She never had to work for a living and has always been pampered by her relatives. This privileged life bores her and she decides to entertain herself with a touch of drama. The entire novel is about Ridley running from one man to another (her father, her brother, her former boyfriend, her new boyfriend), trying to get them to make her feel "safe" and "comforted." When the safety and comfort they provide is not up to her standards, she runs out dramatically and rushes to the next man in line.
This character is the biggest drama queen you can imagine. Every trivial little emotion she experiences or thinks she experiences gets analyzed to death. She blows every tiny little thing completely out of proportion and obsesses over it endlessly. I lost count of how many times she "almost" had a nervous breakdown for absolutely no reason. To give just one example of her drama queen skills, when her boyfriend asks her whether she prefers to call the person she is curious about on the phone or would she like him to go take a look at their house first, Ridley compares this choice with having to choose the method to kill yourself.
Ridley regularly breaks into endless quasi-philosophical monologues filled with the most mind-numbing platitudes you can imagine. Equally annoying is her tendency to address the readers directly to tell them what she knows they must be thinking right now and why they are wrong in thinking it. The so-called mystery in this novel is pretty much non-existent. Anybody who is a little bit less of a drama queen than Ridley could have solved it in 15 minutes.
In short, unless you like reading about spoiled rich drama queens, don't waste time or money on this book. I got the Kindle version for 78 cents, but I would have been pretty annoyed if I had to pay the full price for it.
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
Couldn't put it down!Sep 23, 2006
By Susan Tunis
If there's anything better than discoving a really great first-time author, I don't know what it is. I LOVED Beautiful Lies. Basically, once I'd picked up the book, I just couldn't put it down until I'd finished it.
The protagonist, Ridley, was so real. She told her story in the first person and addressed the reader directly. I swear, I could be friends with her.
And the story she had to tell... It started so plausably and got so convoluted. But I was with her every step of the way. Unger made me buy a fairly far-fetched plot. But mostly, I just wanted to know what was going to happen. What HAD already happened to this girl.
Here's how it begins: Ridley Jones is a successful freelance journalist in NY. She's a happy person with a loving family and a good life. One day a random act of heroism gets her photo splashed across the news for a week. In the wake of her brief celebrity, she receives a photograph in the mail. It's a photo of man she's never seen, a woman who bares a striking resemblance to her, and a two-year old girl who looks like she did as a baby--though she's never seen a photo of herself that young. The accompanying note says, "I think you're my daughter." Ridley is not adopted.
The story aqccelerates at a break-neck pace from there. But aside from great characters, and a strong plot, this is an exceptionally well-written thriller. It's being billed as a "literary thriller," and I don't know that I'd go that far, but this novel is way above average.
I can't wait to see what Lisa Unger writes next. I hope she writes fast!
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