HELLO BEAUTIFUL

by Ann Napolitano

This gorgeous story about four sisters and their relationships with each other, with their overbearing mother and their under-achieving father, is a modern-day recast of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  I am not sure that Hello Beautiful will stand the test of time to rival that classic in its staying power.  Nevertheless, I found it enthralling to read.

The love and loyalty Julia, Sylvie, Cecilia and Emeline Padavano feel for each other is stronger than almost anything that could enter their lives to alter or destroy it.  Their allegiance to their mother Rose and their fondness for their father Charlie seem everlasting.  But when Cecilia announces that she’s pregnant at age seventeen and plans to raise the baby on her own, the tightly knit family begins to unravel. Oldest daughter Julia meets and marries William, the perfect man who fulfills her carefully laid plans for life going forward.  But William turns out to have some deep-seated problems which result in their divorce. In addition, Emeline reveals to the family that she is in love with a woman.  By the time Sylvie decides that her ex-brother-in-law Willliam is the man of her dreams, Charlie has died and Rose has moved to Florida. But even so, many rifts continue on in the Padavano family and we watch each character deal with them in her own way.  If it all sounds like too much, it isn’t.  Napolitano writes beautifully and compassionately.

Similar in feel to Napolitano’s breakthrough novel, Dear Edward, the author excels in her observations about families and how underneath the fierce feelings of love, often lie more complicated feelings.  Hello Beautiful will stay with you for a long time after you’ve finished reading it.  Go ahead: read and enjoy! (Liz)