✨Beautiful Little Fools✨
by Jillian Cantor
Pub Date – 2/1/22
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Jillian Cantor revisits the glittering Jazz Age world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, retelling this timeless American classic from the women’s perspective. Beautiful Little Fools is a quintessential tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately the murder of a man tormented by the past and driven by a destructive longing that can never be fulfilled.
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So I was excited for this book and loved this cover. Then I realized, don’t come for me, I don’t think I have ever watched or read the Great Gatsby. I have this huge aversion to certain things like excessive wealth and philandering and it was never assigned to me.

This book is from the POV of the female characters from The Great Gatsby. The timeline is unraveling to a future point in time where we started in the book. The point where someone shot Jay outside his East Egg home and we get to view the detectives transcripts of his interviews with the women that had converged into this moment in time.

Ok I am not sure what is wrong with me but this just felt like a 1920s dystopian hell for females with every type of toxic masculinity on display and gallons of gin. I really want a g&t now.

I felt for Jordan, and all the women like her that were thrown back into the closet and Myrtle who just wanted love. Ok Daisy wanted to be loved too.

I think it portrayed how difficult it was to be a woman, ok white woman, of that time. You were at the whim and interest of the men around you and once you were no longer interesting or gave your charms to them,  you were discarded even if you were married to them.

I loved this book but just can’t get over that her only choices were an obsessed stalker and a unchecked sex addict. I may have to give in and read the original 🤦‍♀️ lol.
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I loved this quote:
“Grief, Mary Margaret had told me once, was forever, an endless winding river. And here I was drowning.”
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Thank you harperperennial for the gifted copy

✨#Playbookers prompt# 2- Black Widow: Involves death or murder

Synopsis:

USA Today bestselling author Jillian Cantor reimagines and expands on the literary classic The Great Gatsby in this atmospheric historical novel with echoes of Big Little Lies, told in three women’s alternating voices.

On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby.

Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire.

Daisy Buchanan once thought she might marry Gatsby—before her family was torn apart by an unspeakable tragedy that sent her into the arms of the philandering Tom Buchanan.

Jordan Baker, Daisy’s best friend, guards a secret that derailed her promising golf career and threatens to ruin her friendship with Daisy as well.

Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, fights for women’s freedom and independence, and especially for her sister, Myrtle Wilson, who’s trapped in a terrible marriage.

Their stories unfold in the years leading up to that fateful summer of 1922, when all three of their lives are on the brink of unraveling. Each woman is pulled deeper into Jay Gatsby’s romantic obsession, with devastating consequences for all of them.

Jillian Cantor revisits the glittering Jazz Age world of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, retelling this timeless American classic from the women’s perspective. Beautiful Little Fools is a quintessential tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately the murder of a man tormented by the past and driven by a destructive longing that can never be fulfilled.