Book Review: She Regrets Nothing by Andrea Dunlop

(I received an ARC for a fair and honest review. I was not paid for the review. The opinions in this review are my own. I am an Amazon Affiliate which means if you click on any of the pictures or provided links you will be taken to Amazon where if you make any purchases I receive a portion of the sale)

She Regrets Nothing is the story of Laila Lawrence, an orphan at 23, who discovers her estranged, glamorous, and rich New York family after her mother’s death. Dissatisfied with her life in Michigan she moves to New York to climb the social ladder she’s been denied her entire life. She will stop at nothing to get where she wants to be.

Characters that you don’t want to love, but for some reason can’t stop rooting for.

This book follows a similar writing style to books like Saving Grace by Jane Green, The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine or Behind Closed Doors by BA Paris. What Dunlop does differently is create a character that you can’t help but root for even when she acts terribly. I want to hate Laila, because she is a horrible person, but the way Dunlop constructs her, the reader understands (even if she doesn’t agree) why Laila acts as she does. The world she now immerses herself in is all about position and power and money and each of the other complicated characters follow a similar trajectory as Laila even if they don’t realize it.

She writes a setting I want to escape to.

Like her book Losing the Light, Dunlop is masterful at creating setting. I felt like I was a part of the New York scene the Lawrences lived in. I could easily see myself being awed and wrapped up in the glitz of social power through money just like Laila. Isn’t there a part of each of us who wishes we were an Orphan Annie type story?

A surprise ending I didn’t expect but should have.

The ending was a huge surprise and at first I thought it was out of the blue, but Dunlop brings it all back around. I wish she had delved a little deeper into the lives of the other Lawrence family members. Leo, Nora and Liberty didn’t feel as deep as Cameron, Reece and Laila, but overall I loved the page-turning pace of the book and can’t wait to read more from this author.

A fresh take on the unreliable narrator and psychological thriller genre.

I would classify this book as an unreliable narrator story with a hint of psychological thriller. It is very different from the other books I have read about social climbers and it has made me search through my Goodreads list to see what else is out there that is a similar read, but so far I haven’t found any!

If you are looking for a book to curl up with over a rainy weekend, delve into the flashy world of New York’s elite and be grateful your life is much simpler.

She Regrets Nothing is available for preorder and will be released in February.

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