Jennifer Lynn Barnes

"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.

Little White Lies

So this wasn’t my favorite Jennifer Lynn Barnes book but doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fun read. The concept of this book was unlike anything I have ever read before. The debutantes and blackmail was just so much fun. The mystery of the book just somehow left you with questions. I was wondering how there would be a second book and quickly am learning there was a lot more to it then what I originally believed. I’m looking forward to the second one to have everything come together and get answers for Sawyer and how everything came about because that ending changed my whole perspective of the book.

Priscilla Stanfield

Teenage girls solving mysteries. Totally love it even though I asked our dear mc sometimes why she made the decision she made like forgiving a friend after they accused her without knowing the truth. But other than that, it was so perfect!

riry

-fast paced -fun -girl friendships -family dynamics 

gracyn neely

Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One)

Briar's Reviews

I've been meaning to pick up a book by Jennifer Lynn Barnes FOR YEARS. She's one of those authors I've been standing and staring at through the bookstore's glass window, but just never managed to get my hands on one. Then, I stumbled across Little White Lies and the rest was history. I decided it was time to indulge in some YA insanity with backstabbing girls, and it was worth it. This book is a hoot!

Sawyer gets drafted by her Grandma to join her in debutante land, for a lovely exchange of some college fund money. She lives with her Mom far away from that monstrosity and had no idea that was where her life began. When her Grandma offers her a fantastic contract with the deal of a lifetime, she decides to join the craziness that will make her question everything. Bratty girls fighting over boys, expensive dresses, dinners and dances, and enough cops to be involved that we could sink a battleship... Oh, and the fun has only just started.

It's a drama filled book about debutantes and the insane lengths they will go to for them to keep their secrets safe. It ends with a cliffhanger, so I was not impressed... I enjoy my books being able to end nicely without me feeling like I need to continue. But, this book makes me feel like I need to. What happened? Who's the Father? Who's not the Father? Is the pregnancy fake? What's going on? There's so many things that couldn't fit into this book and finish it up nicely.

This book is a long one though, and some of it didn't really need to be there. Some chapters droned on and on while I was just itching for the action to get started (or end, depending on what plot line we are following). 

This book is quirky, and is perfect if you love soap opera like stories - think General Hospital, Pretty Little Liars, Vampire Diaries (without the fantasy). There's enough thrills, drama and laughs in this book to make a reader grin. Keep in mind, it is a YA book so it's relatively clean, with the suggested potential murders, pregnancies and rapes around the corner. The girls are all in jail, but we never get the full why... so if you want to read this book, be ready to commit to a whole series (or read some spoilers to finish the series up, I guess).

Overall, good book! I'll have to try to get my hands on the next one, one of these days.

Three out of five stars.

Emelie

Hela balgrejen var inte så intressant men mysteriet kring arresteringen och vad som hänt över lag gör att jag vill fortsätta serien. Twisten 5 sidor från slutet - shocked!

Candyce Kirk

Fallon Nicole

Loved it! Interesting, thrilling, it kept me guessing until the very end. I'm normally a slow reader but I finished this in two and half weeks. My only compliant is the lack of queer characters and characters of color (I can't remember any canon major characters that were poc or lgbtq+ but I could have forgotten/there might be some coding that I missed). 

I wasn't expecting to like Lily as much as I did (or Campbell for that matter) but Sadie Grace was as delightful as I expected her to be. Sawyer was a bad-ass and I very much liked her. I can't wait for the next book in November.

laura

* I got this book for review for my honest thoughts*

I really enjoyed this read. I thought it was the prefect mix between Pretty little liars and and a fish out of water storyline. I really thought the characters were so easy to connect to and also characters that you felt immediately connected to. I thought that this book by lynn barnes is not as intense as her previous ones but still a fast pace mystery that was such a fast read. I also enjoy the duel time line in the book. It really kept me wanting to turn the page. I will def be checking out book two. If you enjoyed book like Pretty Little liars but desire a book with strong and more well rounded characters this may the read for you!

Ruth Parker 

On paper this book should be perfect for me. But I e struggled so much to get through it. I’ve been reading it on and off for about a year and just decided to skim read it just to get it done. Such a shame, I really don’t know what I didn’t like about it. I was just bored.

Giulia Assenza 

wild, scandalous, (in)proper. fully gaslight gatekeep girlboss with debs

Megan Leprich

This was my first read by Jennifer Lynn Barnes and I officially now have a favorite author to add to my list. Reading the synopsis for this novel I was immediately reminded of Pretty Little Liars which is one of my favorite TV shows as well as some of my favorite books. While I myself never had to be subjected to debutante balls I have always been intrigued by everything that goes into it and have always wondered about the girls that are being pressured, or in this case, bribed into being a debutante.

This book is about Sawyer who lives with her single, kind of absent mother while working as a mechanic for a local garage in their very small town. Having grown up never knowing her father, Sawyer is shocked when her grandmother on her mother's side appears on her doorstep one day offering an insane amount of money to live with her for nine months and become a debutante. Sawyer sees it as the perfect opportunity to dive into her family's past and try to figure out who her father is. With the help of her cousin Lily, Lily's best friend Sadie-Grace, and their enemy Campbell, Sawyer not only finds out the secrets held in their family but she also discovers that perfect southern belles are also capable of felonies. 

I loved this book from the very beginning but who wouldn't be intrigued by four debutante girls, clad in their ballroom gowns, being held in jail cells and the rookie cop is tasked with finding out 1. why they got arrested and 2. finding out the true story behind all of it. It has blackmail, family drama, and comedy all wrapped up perfectly.

I loved Sawyer's character the most but I think that's because I can relate more to her than anything. I was brought up a tomboy working on cars beside my dad and would have laughed at the thought of me ever being a debutante, wearing ball gowns, and attending a ball. About the only time I've worn a dress was at my wedding. Her quick wit and sarcasm kept me laughing and I loved the bonds she developed with the other characters in the book.

I did feel like this book could have been condensed down a little bit which was surprising to me considering some of the chapters skipped a whole month forward. It was written well enough that I didn't get bored of reading, it only felt like certain areas got more drawn out than they needed to be. It was still an excellent read overall and I'm very excited to read more by the author.

Corrie White 

Initially I vehemently disliked this book and had planned on DNFing. If it weren't part of buzzwordathon to be honest I wouldnt have mustered through it.

Overall I'm giving this book 2.5 stars rounded down to 2. I really, REALLY, struggled with Sawyer, the main character, at the beginning. She was full of herself, humble braggy, and felt a little bit like an insert character in a fanfiction. "*I* could master a basic combination lock since I was 9", "I'd been balancing our household budget since I was 9 - around the same time that I'd developed sequential interests in lock picking, the Westminster Dog Show, and fixing the perfect martini." Like?? LOL. 

The dialogue was, and continued to be, downright cringy at times. To the point where I was laughing out loud at the absurdity of it... and I wasnt supposed to be laughing. "Sadie-Grace nibbled on her bottom lip, looking down at me through impossibly long lashes. "If you grew up like that, you must know people," she said very seriously. "You must know people. People who know things."" ?? Who speaks like this? Although I really liked Sadie-Grace I had a super hard time thinking she was anything older than like 13. Her character was not the most fleshed out and her naivety and shyness came more across as cringeworthy and bizarre.

My biggest issue though was the writing style. 1) the flashforwards to the jail scenes were 100% unnecessary and did nothing more than confuse the hell out of me. 2) this book suffers a lot from telling, rather than showing. For every subtle clue or hint the main character would need to spell. it. out. for. you. Like you hadnt just heard the exact same thing she did. It felt like the intent was to make sure you were following along in case you were too stupid to figure it out and this type of writing really aggravates me. 3) Any time the character would read subtext in a conversation it would be done to move the plot along. The problem was the subtext she was presumably getting from these conversations MAKE NO SENSE. It would be like Character 1 says hello and she would be like OH THATS SUBTEXTUAL FOR [INSERT PLOT POINT]. It was like the author was doing a big WINK WINK thing and unfortunately to me I find this to be a serious flaw in the writing. And 4) this book was too frigging long. I think this is supposed to be a series and my question is why? If you had shaved the plot of this book down 100 pages (aka just get rid of the future cop scenes because they add nothing) then the other mystery happening in this book couldve been solved without another book.

The reason why I'm not one starring it is despite the serious issues I have with it... it still intrigued me to the very end. I had correctly figured out the main mystery of this novel before the reveal (which I was also like what? Hahaha about the circumstances surrounding that) and I'm still curious about the loose ends. And I'd also like to see some more character growth from the side characters as they were the most interesting part of the story.

Amanda Furlan

Lynn Braden

Little White Lies is the story of Sawyer Taft, a mechanic who finds herself confronting a family she never knew in order to find out who her biological father really is. As a bonus, Sawyer's estranged grandmother promises to pay for her college education, but the money comes with the stipulation that Sawyer go through the process of becoming a debutante as her mother had when she was 18. Unfortunately, there are very few surprises in this fish-out-of-water story. There are a few small conflicts with members of her family, but not enough to make this story unique. The build up to the discovery of her father lacks suspense, due to the focus on several subplots. 
I am disappointed with this book. Jennifer Lynn Barnes is one of my favorite authors, but this book lacks the emotional depth that is developed in most of her stories. In addition, the supporting characters do not come to life as most of her characters have in previous books. I've read that there is to be a sequel to this book, but there wasn't much of a cliffhanger at the end of this one. Overall, this is a good read, but just not up to the standards set by this author in the past.

Haleigh Buchanan

I don’t know what I was expecting with this book but I got everything I wanted out of it! Mystery, drama, and interesting southern family, debutantes, a kidnapping! This book was a roller coaster ride and I am all for it. It was slightly dark, but it had its bit of humor. I really liked all of the characters, and how many twists and turns this book takes. You think you know the answers? Yeah no you don’t. It’s a fantastic read and I highly recommend it!

Jessica Nottingham

YA and I are in a weird relationship lately, and it's definitely making it harder for me to review books like Little White Lies. This is a book that made me giggle, endeared me to its characters, but then ran way longer than it probably should have. It's rough to sit in that middle ground where you genuinely loved the majority of a story, but there are just small things that make it rougher to finish than you expected. That's this book in a nutshell.

I mean, this book could have probably done with a bit of culling in the plot department. The mystery built around Sawyer and her newly acquired family members started out with a bang. However, as the story progressed, it felt more and more stagnant. The tension that Barnes built up so well at the beginning, that sense of growth that was tied to Sawyer, just slowly simmered off. I was frustrated towards the middle of this story, and really ready to skim. I kept on though and, I can say, the end of this book rewarded me. So, if you feel the same, just keep going. It's worth it.

Also I should note that I appreciated how well Barnes rounds out these characters. Debutantes of any sort have the ability to be vapid girls who have no personality to speak of. In this case, the girls have a wonderful amount of depth. Especially since Sawyer, an outsider to this whole world of pearls and balls, comes into the picture early on. I loved the friendship and the family relationships that came to life on the page. Each girl had their own little quirk that spoke to what we'd expect from the debutante scene: the mean girl, the pretty but spacey one, and the prim one. However as time went on, each one of them broke out of the mold slowly but surely. It was so refreshing.

The actual ending of the book did cause a bit of huffing and puffing from me. I knew that this was an ongoing series, and so I was thoroughly prepared for a cliffhanger ending. What happened instead was the exact opposite. Everything wraps up with a neat bow, and this book just ends. No fanfare, no excitement, but then isn't that just like real life? I suppose I've been groomed to expect book ending frustration. I'm not sure if that's funny or sad.

Anyway, this is well worth a read. It's a charming book and, while it has its flaws, it pushes the envelope on what has been done with characters of this type before. I honestly can't wait for the next book.