Name: taci's review of Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Item: Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One)
Rating: 3.5
Author: taci

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 (Debutantes, Book One)

Little White Lies

taci

But for better or worse, I had people here. Family. I also had questions -about Ana. She was just a girl in a picture, a ghost from the past. She was the situation that Davis Ames had handled. I didn't even know her last name. I didn't know if she'd had the baby. I didn't know what had happened to it if she had. But if I stayed here, I could.

Three girls. Three pregnancies. An inseparable bond. Until Christmas, when Greer had lost her baby and hung her friends out to dry. I wasnt an accident. Despite everything I was trying to wrap my mind around, that little tidbit might have been the hardest. My mom slept with her sister 's husband, and she got pregnant on purpose. l'd asked my mom to tell me the truth, and this time, she had. Lily's dad was my dad.

Three Debutantes. Three pregnancies... "Greer lost her baby," my mom said. "Right around Christmas." "Ellie." Greer let loose of my mom's name, like it had been ripped from her throat by force. It was her idea, you know," my mom said softly. She wasn't facing me, and she wasn't facing Greer. It was almost like she was talking to herself. The pact." “Pact?" I repeated. Three Debutantes. Three pregnancies. The white ribbons. Senator Ames considering any truth that my mother had told me about my conception to be a threat, even though I apparently wasnt his daughter. "Pact," I said again. My heart stopped beating. I wasn't sure it would ever start up again. “I was the result of a pregnancy pact?"

You know what," I said quietly. “Don't worry about me telling anyone that your son is my father. I have no intention of becoming a problem." I turned and walked back to the party. I was halfway up the stairs when I realized he was following me. As I reached the door to the ballroom, he placed one hand on it to prevent me from opening it. "Miss Taft," he said softly. "My son got a gira young girl pregnant years ago." I know. I know this. I "But that girl," he continued, "was not your mother." I whirled around to face him. He couldn't really expect me to believe that, could he? Her name," he said, "was Ana."

This was the answer to the giant question mark that had dogged my life. "It would be very inconvenient if you were to continue down this line of Inconvenient. I swallowed, weathering the blow. That was what I was to 1 wouldn't want to inconvenience you." There was no reason for me to thought." him- all that.I was. I would have preferred a threat. sound gutted. I was the one playing him here. I was the one recording this conversation. I was the one with the upper hand. So why did I feel six years old and alone? «Smart girl." The senator allowed his hand to fall from my shoulder. "Because if you do become inconvenient?" His tone turned almost affectionate. 1ll kill you, sweetheart."

"He as in the senator," I echoed Lily. You as in Walker. That's one interpretation." "Maybe I was talking about Walker when I wrote those words." I could still see the subtle, serpentine smile working its way first to one side then to the other of Campbell's lips. "But to a jury? It's going to look like I was talking about Nick." Campbell had said, that night on the lawn, that she wasn't framing Nick Slowly, I'd pieced together the real plan: framing daddy dearest for framing Nick. Piece by piece and move by move, she was laying a trap, one that would result in the truth coming out about the hit and run in a way that not even a powerful senator could counteract. "I'm doing this for Walker," Campbell had told me. "I'm doing this because Daddy would never expect it of me."

If you weren't driving," I said pointedly, “and Walker wasn't, who was?" She waited so long to reply that I wasn't sure a response was coming. And then it did. "Our father."

"You're lying." I was possibly channeling television detectives a little too much. "You're protecting him-just like you had to find out who was behind Secrets once you realized he'd confessed." in her hand. She turned her back to me and wrapped it taut around her body. the merry-go-round of self-destruction two days later?" hollow, “he thinks that he was." "Walker. Was. Not. Driving." Campbell's fist tightened around the towel "If Walker wasn't driving," I pressed, “"then why exactly did he hop on "Because," Campbell said, her voice low and fierce and strangely

"What if the reason Campbell wanted to figure out who was behind Secrets was because there was a secret she didn't want to get out?" Lily pressed her lips together. "I remember all of the submissions I got. Every one." She pulled up a picture in the queue and turned the tablet toward me. In this particular shot, she was lying prone, her back arched and her hands digging into what appeared to be sand. Her head was thrown back and chopped out of the shot. The message was vertical, starting on one arm and continuing on the other. I was driving. In isolation, that sentence seemed benign. But knowing what we You think Campbell sent this secret in and then regretted it?" I asked “Do you think it was Walker? 

Trust you?" Nick jerked back from her touch. "Even when we were having our fun, I never trusted you, Campbell." "They're reinvestigating the theft, Nick. My father is putting pressure on the DA to make another arrest-and make it stick this time." I counted the length of the silence between them with the beats of my own heart: one, two... "I don't care what your father is doing," Nick said coldly. “You don't know my father," Campbell insisted. “I don't know why he wants this case in the news again. I don't know what he's trying to redirect attention from, but Senator Sterling Ames always gets what he wants." I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. I had a theorya good one about why the senator might want to control the news cycle now. His wife had confronted me. Had she confronted him? If he knew that I knew that he was my father, then he might have spent the past two weeks waiting to see what my next move would be.

"They aren't your family, baby." My mom gave me a sharp look. I am." What about college?" I asked. She could have told me that I didn't need Lillian's money, that I could work for another couple of years, enroll at community college, put myself through school. "You don't need to go to college," she said instead. What?" I couldn't believe she'd just said that. And yet... I could. My mom wanted me to put all of this behind me and come home. 

You and Walker..." She stepped toward me. "It's just wrong." There is no me and Walker, I thought, but I didn't say it, because suddenly, my mouth was dry. Suddenly, I couldn't feel the ghost of her grip on my arm. I couldn't feel anything. "Wrong," I repeated, struggling to hear my own voice over the echoing She said nothing, but the look on her face gave away the game. You and I knew then. I knew, but I had to be sure. Wrong," I repeated a second time, "because I'm trash?" My heart in my ears. "Walker and I... would be wrong." Walker, it's just wrong. jumped into my throat, beating out an incessant rhythm that warned me against continuing. I did it anyway. "Or wrong because your husband is my father?"

I extracted myself from her steely, aggresively affectionate grip. “Why is Sadie-Grace's presence needed in the dining room?" I asked. I expected a flippant response, but Walker's expression was measured. "Because," he said gently, aiming the words more at Sadie-Grace than at me, "her stepmother just announced to the whole room that she's pregnant."

It wasn't carolers. I sucked in a breath and found that no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to let it out. "Ellie." Uncle J.D. was gobsmacked, but he covered well. Better than I did, as I gaped at the woman standing in a little black dress and modest black heels on my grandmother's front porch. Mom?"

"We helped you, Nick," the girl named Sawyer said. The boy-Nick -rocked back on his heels, smiling in a way that told Mackie he was enjoying this altogether too much. The first time I was arrested?" he asked. "Or the second?"

"I want you to keep your mouth closed." When it looked like I might argue, he cut me off. "So I lost my job," he said dismissively. "Have you seen this place?" He gestured to the private room around us. “Do you think I could have afforded this kind of care on a valet's salary? On a bartender's?" He didn't say where he'd gotten the money to pay the fees. It occurred to me then that maybe I'd read the situation with Campbell wrong. Maybe she hadn't framed him. Maybe she'd helped him.

Tearing my eyes from the police car, I made my way back toward the kitchen stairs. If I could get through the party without drawing attention, I could figure out why the police were here. What Campbell was telling them. What I was missing. But when I got to the kitchen, the police were already there. There were two officers, and they had one person between them--a boy, cuffed, being read his rights. Nick.

It didn't look like Campbell had deleted or modified a single picture. As I came to the last two photos, I stopped. One contained a naked girl, curled into a ball, her arms wrapped around her knees, her chest and privates obscured. The other was a screencap of the Secrets blog, taken only minutes before. What did Campbell do? My mouth went dry, and I pulled up the site. There was, indeed, a new post- the second-to-last picture from the reel. I took in the details: the lighting, the angle, the careful handwriting in which a single sentence had been scripted onto the model's naked back. “He made me hurt you.” 

"Guys," Sadie-Grace repeated, her voice going up an octave. "Look." I looked. The limo had just turned onto Camellia Court. Sadie-Grace's other, and down at the end, on the largest of the oversized lots, was the only Tonight, that gate was open. There were police cars in the driveway- house was on one side of the cul-de-sac; my grandmother's was on the house on the block set back from the street by a wrought-iron gate. three of them. Flashing blue and red lights drilled themselves into my brain

"I thought you didn't have friends," I said lowly. "I don't," Campbell replied, pleased as punch. “I have alibis."

I moved close enough to read it. Campbell's message was all of two words long,. GAME ON. Beside me, Lily bolted. At first, I thought she was going outside to puke her brunch up, but she kept running. To the main house. Up the stairs. To her room. I managed to keep up with her, but only just. "I's gone." Lily sank to the floor next to her trash can, and in uncharacteristic burst of temper, she knocked it over. "The tablet I used for Secrets," she whispered hoarsely. "I threw it away, and now it's gone."

I tapped the writing etched into the tag. "Name. Phone number." « Sophie,' " Lily read. “Is that the owner's name, or the pet's?" "The real question," I replied, "is why Campbell's hiding a pet tag in a botle of vitamins in her golf locker." 

"Before you say anything," she told me primly, "you should know that we can explain," "Explain what?" I said. In reply, Lily opened the door to the pool house. There, inside, was a teenage girl, bound, gagged, and duct-taped to a chair. "Sawyer," Sadie-Grace said ruefully. Meet Campbell Ames."

 the picture of twenty-four squires my aunt's age, her husband incuded? It was identical to the photograph I'd stolen from my mom. The only difference was that the year on my mom's picture had been scratched out. Four of the faces had been scratched out. I'd assumed that my mystery father had done Symphony Ball with my mother. I'd assumed that was why she had the photograph in the first place. l'd assumed wrong 

Grace Sinks

I mean it was okay, but I was kinda confused with all the names during the book

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!

anonymous

-fast paced -fun -girl friendships -family dynamics 

gracyn neely

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.

Lilly-May Price

Liv Harman 

Taryn Viera

Meaghan Ervin

adleena

Perfection Learning Corporation

Eighteen-year-old Sawyer accepts her estranged grandmother's bribe to live with her for a year, participate in the debutante season and ball, and possibly meet the father she has never known.

Grace Sinks &
Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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Grace Sinks &Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

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Grace Sinks &
Little White Lies (Debutantes, Book One) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes