Hello Beautiful
Ratings72
Average rating4.1
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole? “Hello Beautiful is exactly that: beautiful, perceptive, wistful. It’s a story of family and friendship, of how the people we are bound to can also set us free. I loved it.”—Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper Palace William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos. But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most? An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
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I stayed up into the wee hours to find out how the Padavano Sisters would turn out. I had already spent several earlier chapters in tears with them, so not finishing was not an option. This one is still on the NYTIMES Bestseller List as of this writing and definitely worthy of that honor. Often marketed as a modern retelling of Little Women, it is only that way in that the sisters compare themselves to the March sisters off and on throughout the story. Because to be perfectly frank, a modern retelling of Little Women is not my usual literary fare. If my bookish friends whose opinions I value- Kelly T and Narci - I'm looking at you- hadn't recommended this one so highly- I would've passed on it. I think this book touched me so deeply because I have 3 sisters of my own and I was raised in a tight knit Catholic family. I will be shipping my copy to one of my sisters immediately and then insisting she pass it along until we all have read it, wept a bit, and finally stopped to reflect on the power of familial love. Highly recommend.
Having just read Little women this was an interesting read. Hello Beautiful is a Little Women retelling, which I was unaware of going into it.
Overall, this was an ok book for me. It was really slow in some parts. But if you enjoyed Little Women then you might enjoy the story which focused heavily on sisters and family dynamics.
This book is thoroughly mediocre and merits about 2.5 stars. Around the 150-page mark, I also thought of DNFing it because there is so much telling and not nearly enough showing. This is a literary fiction about intergenerational relationships but the people in it felt so one-dimensional, bland and clichéd. like characters I would expect from YA books. We're told again and again how the Padavano sisters are so close yet all their actions show the exact opposite of that. As an elder sibling, I was particularly pissed at Julia's actions. It almost felt like Napolitano wrote one character and then split her 4 ways. The capacity for empathy for Will has only been bestowed upon Sylvie and not his wife Julia. The capacity to stand up to their mother has only been bestowed upon CeCe and not on Julia/Sylvie. All of the stakes in this are not that deep and could be overcome in about half a second if any of these people had even a passing interest in each other, let alone the kind of all-consuming sisterly love we're told they do. rounding up my rating to three because there were some moments I enjoyed and the prose wasn't half bad.
