The Heiresses / Sara Shepard / 308 pgs.

Sara Shepard, author of the popular YA series "Pretty Little Liars", takes a shot at describing the lives of the
extremely wealthy for the adult audience.  The 5 heiresses of a lucrative family jewelry business are thrown into chaos and public scrutiny when one of them is murdered.  As the FBI investigates, family secrets are thrown open and everyone in this large family has a skeleton hidden away.

Its fun to follow the dysfunction as it increases with each family member and relationships, but some of the "big secrets" were trite and could be guessed pages ago.  It also makes one wonder, "how stupid can people be?" and conclude, "most of the family's problems could be avoided if people would just remain faithful (or abstinent) and stop sleeping around with your in-laws"!  Uncovering the whole truth to each family member's story reminded me of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", except less violent, and not as intriguing.  Overall, its a fair, quick read.

Goddess of Vengeance / Jackie Collins / 516 pgs

*sigh* what can I say about this book.....  Well, I read it because I never read a Jackie Collins book before and I wanted to just see what it was like.  If you like to read stories with mega-rich characters that live glamorous lives throwing their endless supply of money on whatever frivolous thing then this book would be for you.   It read like a soap opera or like watching an episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.  The characters problems are trite, and not a single one of them seemed to be a decent human being.

Collins style is a bit raunchy with way to much talk about hookups, one night stands, prostitutes, past sexual histories, etc. etc.   And then there was the story line.  Now I love a good revenge story, and this one started off okay.  There is this mega-rich jerk who feels very entitled and hates women.  He wants to buy the mega successful hotel that the main character, Lucky, but she tells him no.  The guy then proceeds to whine and cry like a toddler and then try to find a hit man to kill Lucky.  All of the story lines converge on a single night in Las Vegas and as far as the Vengeance goes well that was a real let down too.

The strangest thing is that Sidney Poitier is one of the readers on the audio version.  Its very distracting/disturbing to hear him narrate the inconsequential thoughts of a vapid 17 year old.  Ugh!