Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Hello Beautiful

Oh lord. How do I describe this book? When I read it was like a Little Women retelling I was a tad scared because I didn't know what to expect. Let me tell you to expect to laugh, cry, and smile at this beautiful book. I was skeptical about the first few chapters but then Napolitano throws you a curve ball and ramps the pace right up! The characters are complex and beautifully developed, the story manages to be funny, sad, and reflective of family and love all at the same time. The end is beautiful and unexpected (I cried for like 80 pages no joke!) but perfectly closes out the book and all loose ends. I wish I could read this again for the first time because i'd appreciate it more!

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kiwichill's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I can relate so much to the sisters in this book for deeply personal reasons. My mum passed away from a brain tumour in 1991. This book reverberates in my heart for so many reasons, and will stay with me for the rest of my life

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juliee181's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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readingwith_lorena's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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goodin10tions's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Hello Beautiful Ann Napolitano with Maura Tierney (Narrator)

This is a very long (15 hours/400 pgs) story about family, forgiveness and generational trauma.

Because of the multiple POV of the same event, it can feel repetitive. However, that touches a personal favorite topic of mine which is how the same thing can happen to multiple people but they all remember it differently.

What this book is not is a page turner. I am seeing critiques about it being boring and long. If you aren’t comfortable spending 15 hours on a book, skip this one.

The book is described as an exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women. I can vouch for this, the characters also compare themselves to the March sisters.

In short, if you loved Little Women, you’ll probably love the Padavano sisters.

If you are going to read them together, I’d recommend Little Women first.

If you are doing the 52 BookClub 2024 reading challenge this book meets: four POV, grieving character, a plot similar to another book, the OTHER book, includes a wedding, and chapters have dates.

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marinajonesreads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What a beautiful beautiful book. As a younger sister with a deep bond to my older sister, I was enraged and understanding and sad and mad all throughout. That’s how you know it’s a good and authentic story. I loved every part of this book, even when I was so angry at one of the sisters I wanted to scream.

It was so beautifully written. Getting to see such a unique POV structure was refreshing and I loved being inside all of their heads. This tiny nuclear family with diamond strings connecting them to each other.

I loved it.

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jdamae11's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Can’t lie, I don’t usually grab books with celeb or “book club” stickers because I feel so much pressure to enjoy them, but I’m grateful for the reading experience this book gave me. This book definitely made me feel ALL the emotions, especially in the final third. The writing was beautiful & although the pacing was slower than what I usually prefer, it was paced consistently well throughout. Each of the characters felt so solid to me, like I could grab them out of the pages, they were so devastatingly human. I’m a sucker for stories about sisters & their bonds, & at times it felt like I was peaking in on moments too intimate for me to be a part of. I appreciated how much personal reflection this book inspired, & a stand out element for me was the well-crafted portrayal of messy, complicated dynamics of mother-daughter relationships. I found the author’s depiction of depression to be so intensely real / visceral & relatable as someone who lives with it- if you’ve ever had depression &/or anxiety, I feel like you can recognize it in teen/young adult William immediately, & I personally felt dread when reading from his early 20s POV bc wow the thoughts were so close to home. Well done to the author on that for sure.

Here’s some of what didn’t work for me, light spoiler territory ahead so proceed with caution!! I haven’t star rated books in a MINUTE but if I had to frame it that way, this book had lost a star and a half from me b/c of some of this:

Using William as one of the main protagonist POVs didn’t work too well for me as a framing device, I found myself always wanting to be back in the sisters’ heads. At a certain point, I admittedly found him to be quite draining (not as a result of his mental health breakdown, rather as a result of him seemingly using that to absolve himself of responsibility for how his actions affected others). Re: William’s mental health overall - I don’t know if I like how I felt it was used as a device later in the book, almost like it could be leveraged to brush off some of his really harmful, continuous decisions without an acknowledgment of the results of those or any self-accountability for the character. Basically William at one point is like ‘I know I destroyed this family & keep leaving my daughter with awful abandonment issues’..& then just keeps being coddled & refuses to do anything about it. This I guess is what makes him feel so dang real as a character, but sometimes it leaned in a way that made me think I was supposed to be ‘poor William’ boo-hooing as well. There were also a few moments in the book when things seemed to just conveniently fall into place for the characters’ benefit that didn’t feel natural or earned - eg William & Kent both getting lucrative pro sports jobs AND at the same team, like cmon. My big ick with this was that a man—William—could absolutely destroy what is painted as an impenetrable bond between 2 of the sisters, & ultimately all of the women of this family. My not nice version of this is that William ain’t sh*t. Julia is for sure a Capricorn & came with the coldness, but she did not deserve to be played so bad the way she was. She was a lil too relatable for me, as was Sylvie, which if you’ve read the book, is hilarious & makes me basically a walking contradiction (true)

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