Pretty Things

Janelle Brown is the author of the 2020 mystery thriller Pretty Things. A best-selling author, Brown worked for influential websites in the 1990s, and, in Pretty Things, she examines how social media and the internet connects to grifting and can manipulate people and the truth.

The study guide refers to an eBook version of the 2020 Random House edition.

Content warning: The book and this guide contain discussions of death by suicide, drug use, domestic abuse, sexual harassment and abuse, and stigmatizing language about mental health.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with a graphic description of a dead body that sinks into the depths of Lake Tahoe and does not return to the surface.

The story shifts to a seemingly unrelated scene, and an unnamed narrator takes the reader into a glamorous Los Angeles nightclub where people snap photos of themselves and post them on social media. The people are the eponymous “pretty things,” and the narrator spotlights a woman who seduces the son of a Russian oligarch. She drugs him, drives him back to his mansion and, with the help of her partner and boyfriend, Lachlan O’Malley, robs him.

It materializes that the narrator and the mercenary woman are the same person: Nina Ross. Nina chooses her targets by following their social media.