I am so excited to be kicking off the blog tour for Deadly Little Scandals today as Jennifer Lynn Barnes is one of my favorite authors and I absolutely loved reading Little White Lies last year (see my mini review and aesthetic here). Since Deadly Little Scandals is the sequel to Little White Lies, beware of spoilers. I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as I possibly can.
Deadly Little Scandals takes place at the start of the summer after Little White Lies. The girls have graduated from high school and are preparing to head off to college in the fall. They’ve headed up to the lake with their families but are still dealing with the aftermath of their actions in book 1. Sawyer, Lily, Sadie Grace, and Campbell are tight after everything that went down in book 1. Now, they’re being initiated into the White Gloves, a secret society for the high-class college girls. It’s all fun and games until a 20-year old skeleton turns up and the girls believe they might be connected to it.
I didn’t think there could be any more huge twists after Little White Lies, but oh boy was I wrong. There are SO many more twists in book 2 than there were in book 1. I don’t know why this always surprises me as I have read several of the author’s novels now, but Jennifer Lynn Barnes truly is the master of twists. Like book 1, there’s a POV taking place in the future where we find the girls being buried alive. We flashback to the start of the summer and are taken through the events that led up to this situation. I loved this style of storytelling, especially since a third timeline is added in this book—this time it’s 25 years before and focuses on the parents.
I also loved all of the new characters we’re introduced to in Deadly Little Scandals.The world expands as we meet the older girls who are graduating from the White Gloves and get more of the backstory of the girls’ parents by actually seeing them as teens in the flashbacks. The focus on family is still present throughout the book and we see more into the different kinds of complicated and complex relationships the girls have with their families.
Overall, the Debutantes is a duology not to be missed! Deadly Little Scandals will take you on a wild ride full of twists and turns that you will not see coming!
My Rating:
*This ARC was provided to me by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
About Little White Lies
Release Date: November 6, 2018
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
“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.
About Deadly Little Scandals
Release Date: November 5, 2019
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
“Think of the White Gloves like the Junior League-by way of Skull and Bones?”
Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret. When her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite, and all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group’s ranks may have the answers she’s looking for. Things are looking up… until Sawyer and the White Gloves make a disturbing discover near the family’s summer home—and uncover a twisted secret, decades in the making.
No one is quite who they seem to be in this twisty, soapy, gasp-inducing sequel to Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ unputdownable Little White Lies.
About Jennifer Lynn Barnes
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | TWITTER | GOODREADS
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (who mostly goes by Jen) is the author of more than a dozen critically acclaimed young adult novels. She has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science, including graduate degrees from Cambridge University, where she was a Fulbright Scholar, and Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in 2012.
Jen wrote her first published novel when she was nineteen-years-old and sold her first five books while still in college. In additional to writing YA novels, Jen has also written original pilot scripts for television networks like USA and MTV, and she is one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of fandom and the cognitive science of fiction and the imagination more broadly. Jen is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she holds a dual appointment in Psychology and Professional Writing.
Awesome cover! This will be fun to read.
Ah, I didn’t realize this was a duology! I’m definitely going to have to read it. It’s giving me major Pretty Little Liar vibes and I was completely obsessed with that show!
I am excited to get some answers, and it sounds like Barnes did a great job keeping us guessing with this book
Little White Lies was one of my favorite reads last year and I’m so excited to read Deadly Little Scandals. I’m absolutely addicted to these books!
This sounds like a fantastic read! Great review! 🙂