I am sad. I am sad that there are only four more Megan Abbott books that I haven't read, and by the end of this year (maybe even the end of this month)- I will probably have finished them all. I am trying to space them out- reading other books by other authors in between...but lately I have been failing miserably- and as soon as I finish one- I want another NOW! Yes- I am an addict. A Megan Abbott addict...Lora King- a straight-laced school teacher, and her doting brother Bill- a junior investig...

When her brother's new wife seems too good to be true, Lora King starts poking around in her sister-in-law, Alice Steele's past, uncovering ugly things lurking beneath Hollywood's glitzy surface. Can she protect her brother before getting ensnared in the same web as Alice?I've arrived at Die a Little, Megan Abbott's debut novel, after weaving a serpentine course through her other noir books. It sure doesn't read like a first novel. All the things I love about her later novel are there, fully-for...

Almost from the start, Lora King, a Pasadena schoolteacher, thinks that something fishy is going on with her mysterious new sister-in-law. In an effort to protect her pussy-whipped brother, she begins to investigate his wife's secrets, and she finds herself uncovering a world of sex, drugs, and murder. Given how much I enjoyed the three other books I've read by Megan Abbott, I was surprised with how disappointed I was with this one, her debut novel. I really wanted to like it more than I did, bu...

A terrific debut noir novel (2005)! Set in the 1950's, Lora, a schoolteacher, lives with her brother Bill, a rising star in the DA's office. Orphaned years earlier, their relationship is especially close, and each would go to great lengths to protect one another.Their orderly life is disrupted when Bill meets glamorous Alice and after a whirlwind romance, they marry. Alice busies herself becoming the perfect 1950s housewife with a flurry of cooking, decorating, and neighborhood parties, even goi...

Fabulous. I devoured it in the last 2 days. Megan Abbott writes like a cross between Jim Thompson, James M. Cain and Doris Day. I think I'm going to log off now and drink a gin rickey and eat a cream puff.

The 1950s seems to be an idealized era, full of change and promise; some would say it was a simpler time. Veterans were settling down to desk jobs, marrying, and raising families of their own. Women's fashion, technology, and the entertainment world were swerving in a new direction. Everyone seemed to be generally prospering and there was relative peace. That's the world that Lora, a twenty-something school teacher, and her brother Bill live in: a serene, quiet existence in West Pasadena.The day...

I just loved this 1950's hollywood noir thriller. The short, fluid paragraphs capture the intensity of the story through Lora our main character whose sheltered life with her brother as companion is being threatened by his new wife Alice an enigmatic character with a shady past.Lora is simply unable to ignore her instinct that Alice is not playing straight and risks everything to enter a world she doesn't understand to uncover the truth.

I'm surprised I haven't run across this author before. Literary neo-noir, lady-fied?? That's right up my dark, steam-filled alley! Yet somehow it was a real-life human who recommended it, which almost makes me wonder why I've wasted seven years on this website...This is a little like James Ellroy's books about the dirty cop who's in love with his sister, only with a woman's touch. It's also a little like well-informed fan fiction that plays with the tropes and cliches of classic noir films: this...

DIE A LITTLE is the first in a series of books frm Megan Abbott flagged somewhat unhelpfully as "modern noir". I'm not at all sure what that should imply in terms of expectation, but whatever caused it, something didn't really work about this book for me.Leaving aside the fact that the cover is absolutely wonderful and the title is glorious, the style very atmospheric and the build up interesting (woman with a "past" who marries a cop, cop's sister smells a rat, digs), something about the delive...

RATING: 3.25First bookLora King is a straitlaced schoolteacher who shares her home with her brother, Bill, who is a police investigator. Brother and sister are very close to one another until the time that Bill meets an erotic and beautiful wardrobe assistant named Alice Steele. He falls completely under her spell, even after they marry. In every way, she is the perfect woman--physically beautiful, magnetic personality, devoted to her husband—their life together seems almost like a fairy tale. A...

fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i love that i haven’t gotten around to reading yetthis whole monthly goal to 'read a book i've never read by an author i love' endeavor has been interesting, especially in those months where the book i hadn't read was the beloved author's debut, which was the case with this one, John Crow's Devil, and Under the Bright Lights.for some reason, i was convinced that The End of Everything was her debut, and the handful of girlnoir books...

Megan Abbott’s first novel is a nifty little noir set in post-war LA. School teacher Lora King is extremely close to her brother Bill who is a police detective. When Bill meets Alice Steele he falls head over heels for her, and the two are soon married. Alice shows a tireless energy and enthusiasm for life as a homemaker that would make Martha Stewart feel like a lazy slob, but Lora finds herself becoming suspicious of her new sister-in-law after getting clues indicating that she had a shady pas...

3.5 Stars Megan Abbott is an interesting author. Die A Little is my second Megan Abbott novel and those two books could not be more different. Last month I read The End of Everything which was a dark coming of age novel set in the 1980's(?). I really enjoyed that book it was super dark and most importantly it was well written. Die A Little is I believe Megan Abbott's first novel and....Wow! What a debut! Die A Little is a classic-type of noir crime novel. Lora doesn't like her beloved brother Bi...

It’s a hell of a debut for Megan Abbott: a female led mystery in 1940’s Hollywood with a distinctly unreliable narrator.There’s murder, a femme-fatale and a too trusting dope of a man. But it feels like Abbott is referencing women’s films of the 1940s, as much as she is standard noir. As if she spent many an hour watching and re-watching Joan Crawford as MILDRED PIERCE, just so she could get the perfect balance between vulnerability and steel.The plot finds a policeman, Bill, meeting cute with a...

I picked this up on a whim, knowing nothing about it or Megan Abbott, it sat on my shelf for a while and then I started to notice a lot of love and enthusiasm for the author on GR, intrigued I figured the time was right, the planets had aligned, I would read this book.I started to doubt the rave reviews after about 40 pages; a lot of time was spent on listing household items being bought by one of the characters which felt like an attempt to showoff all of the research that was done by the autho...

‘...behind that knockout face of hers, she’s more like the women they see on the job, on patrol, on a case, in the precinct house. Women with stories as long as their rap sheets, as their dangerous legs...’Megan Abbott channels the hallowed echoes of ghosts from the golden era of pulp in her depiction of a small town school teacher and her square world turned upside down by a double dose of femme fatale. 'Die A Little' provides protagonist Lora King, a cops sister, and deer-in-the-headlights sch...

4 Stars for Die a Little (audiobook) by Megan Abbott read by Ellen Archer. This was a nice change from the typical noir murder mystery. I like that the main character wasn’t a detective. The narration was great too.

This is not my typical fare, and wow, I LOVED IT!!!! Gobbled it up! Delicious and delectable!This book proved to me that I can and should venture out of my comfort zone. I read this at every possible opportunity even if it meant that I could only read two pages at a time. It called to me when I was away from it.Will write real review this coming week.

This is book that leaves me conflicted. Abbot is undeniably a talented writer. She has a way with phrasing and a compelling voice. The first half of this book just left me cold. Her POV character in this book, Lora King, is a young woman in her early 20's in 1950's Los Angeles. Lora's Brother is a tough DA investigator who has just become married to a woman with a dark past. Lora attempts to get to the bottom of some things and hilarity ensues. I am caught between what I thought of as a dreary f...

4.5 There is something about Abbott's writing that I find strongly appealing, and it goes beyond her ability to recreate the perfect 40s/50s crime noir-esque feeling.This is the third novel I've read by her, the second crime noir, and so far my favorite. Reading this for me was like reading Shirley Jackson or even Flannery O'Connor. Though stylistically different, all three women had the ability to explore the darker side of human nature in a way that leaves you rooting for the bad guys, or rath...