Review
From the book jacket: 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...
Beyond the Book
Lisa Unger says that for a long time she didn't believe it was possible to make
a living as a writer, "mainly because that's what people always told me", so she
went into the profession that brought her closest to her dream - publishing.
A few years later she met her future husband in Key West and after a
whirlwind romance they sold their homes, quit their corporate jobs and moved to
Florida. She says that only once
she had some distance from New York, could she start appreciating the city and it naturally became the setting for
Beautiful Lies.
When asked what elements of the story come from her own experience she
answers, "For me and for most fiction writers, I think, it is true to say that
everything and nothing in my work...
