Fast Boys and Pretty Girls by Lo Patrick ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

They say you can never go home again. And sometimes, you shouldn't.

 

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site.  A free book was provided for an honest review.

July 2025; Sourcebooks Landmark; 978-1728290478
audio, ebook, print (336 pages); southern fiction

Danielle is 17 years old and lives with her family in the Georgia mountains when she is offered a job as a model in NYC.  Her parents agree to it and she moves to New York.  She is semi-successful as a model and goes home to take a break.  When she's there, she starts an affair with a 16-year-old boy in her small town -- to say that he is the typical bad boy is putting it mildly.  She invites him to New York and he goes for a short time but hates the big city and soon returns to the Georgia mountains.  Their relationship continues despite the warnings of her parents and sister but she is totally consumed with him and doesn't want to deal with negative life.  She finally returned home for good and the relationship ended because they both wanted different things out of life.  Then there was a fatal accident and life changed for her.

Years later, Dani is living in her parents' old house with her husband and 4 daughters.  She seems pretty well disinterested in her children but when they find human bones in a ravine behind their house, she gets worried because she's pretty sure that she knows who it is and she begins to think about her younger days and her life as a model.  The book switches back and forth between Dani as a young girl and Dani as a parent which was a very effective way to tell the entire story.

Normally Southern fiction is one of my favorite genres but this one didn't click with me.  I didn't like the main character as a teenager or as an adult.  She just seemed kind of disconnected from her life and never seemed to try to understand all that had happened to her.  She made some bad decisions but never really understood how they affected the rest of her life or her family.   I think that this book should be considered as a YA book - that is the audience that it seems that it was written for.

Buy Fast Boys and Pretty Girls at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is three hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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