Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Read by Maura Tierney

15 hours, 6 minutes

Published March 2023 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

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?

My Thoughts:

As much as I've been on the struggle bus with my reading, I've been even worse with writing reviews. I drafted this right up to this point on October 9, almost a month ago. This one has proved especially difficult, as I've struggled with figuring out how I felt about this book. If you check out reviews on Goodreads, you'll find that other people have no such problem - they generally either really dislike this one (and think the characters are one-dimensional) or they absolutely rave about it (and it's fully-developed characters). 

Here's What I Liked: 

• I always like a story about families, especially the relationship between sisters. Here Napolitano draws from the characters of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women in creating these sisters and their close bonds. And, like that book, while their father is a great influence, he, too, inhabits very little of the book. But Rose is no Marmee. She is determined that her girls will all go to college so that they have control of their own future and won't have to rely on a man, which is admirable enough...until things don't go Rose's way. 
• The focus might be on the sisters, but William was my favorite character. A man whose parents all but ignored him, so deep in their grief were they over the death of their 3-year-old daughter, William is lost in his life until he finds he has a skill playing basketball. He's so skilled, in fact, that he gets a college scholarship to play and it's here that he finally finds his family, both the one that he will marry into and the circle of friends who will be there for him for decades. When Julia decides that he's the man that she can mold to give her the future she wants, one filled with stability and status, he's happy to have someone guide him and to become a part of the Padavano family. Except that what Julia wants for him begins to make William so miserable that he eventually breaks. Healing him causes a rift that will take two decades to resolve. 
• The basketball. So unexpected that the minutiae of this sport would play such a significant part in a family saga. This sports fan enjoyed it. 

What I Struggled With:

• The book begins in the late seventies and spans a quarter of a century. But it reads much more like a book set in the 1940's, 1950's. It made some of the things that happened or descriptions of events or clothing feel jarringly out of place. 
• I really, really did not like Julia. I understood why she craved stability and status, but she was so rigid in her vision of it that she completely misread William and reacted so poorly to his collapse. And then I felt like the rift that came between her and the rest of the family was largely on her - I understood her being upset, but not that she was never able to forgive the person she had most loved in the world. It caused her daughter a lot of confusion and, in the end, anger. 
• I didn't care for the way the rift was resolved between Julia and Sylvia and even less for the way Julia's daughter finally met her family. Although so many others felt that the ending was a real tear-jerker. 

This would make a good book club selection as there is a lot here to discuss and many themes to talk about, including loss, mental health, expectations and dream, betrayal, secrets, family relationships.