Hello Beautiful – Ann Napolitano
Expectation: A richly-layered tearjerker that tracks the ups and downs of four sisters and the people in their orbit.
Reality: Too many characters without development and repetitive sections showed the author couldn’t scale her storytelling ambition.
My Take:
Throughout “Hello Beautiful” there were glimpses of the novel that Ann Napolitano thought she was writing — a modern riff on “Little Women'' that explores love, loyalty, ambition, trauma and resentment through the ties that bind the Padavano sisters of Chicago.
Unfortunately, that’s not the novel that was delivered.
Instead the author gave an exhausting and bloated account of selfishness rooted as self-preservation with so many scenarios exacerbated by the fact the sisters refuse to communicate effectively with one another.
Each is trapped in a perpetual cycle of “trying to be Jo” while leveraging secrets and past traumas as an excuse to justify decisions. It’s difficult to be charmed by people who would rather wallow in misery and guilt for decades than move forward. They all need a good therapist and healthy coping mechanisms.
I’m firmly in the minority with my disdain of the novel, and to be fair, I do want to offer a few caveats to my scorn:
This is certainly a “right mindset” type of read, and I probably didn’t do it justice by attempting it at the start of the busy holiday season. It required more attention than I was able to give. When I spent a few hours at a time with the novel, I found it more enjoyable than trying to work in one chapter at a time.
The audiobook was absolutely terrible. I expected so much more from acclaimed actress Maura Tierney who gave a stilted and flat narration. Many sections felt like she was reading the page for the first time, and there was absolutely no distinction between any of the characters.
With those acknowledgements, here are my primary gripes about “Hello Beautiful:”
Too many characters with little development. While there are four POVs, really only three matter: William, Julia and Slyvie. The remaining Padavano's — Cecelia, Emeline and Rose — are essentially nonplayer characters (NPCs) designed to soften the edges. Even Alice who gets her own POV in the last third felt like an afterthought. Her perspective could’ve been cut, and the novel wouldn’t have suffered (more than it already was).
It’s repetitive. Rather than leveraging the alternating POVs to offer a rich emotional connection to the characters, each section was a carbon copy of the one before with a few new insights scattered within making this needlessly slow moving and an absolute slog to work through. You could make a game out of the amount of times Napolitano repeats dialogue verbatim.
The most interesting ideas become afterthoughts. If you love superficial recaps – essentially journal entries — then you’d love how the plot moves along. Two ideas – William’s depression and Julia’s ambition — were incredibly fascinating but Napolitano barely gave them room to breathe.
I had considered DNFing this book almost daily, but what kept me going were the sections where the author addressed the danger in trying to control and change people and the importance of chosen family. Unfortunately these were infrequent in the second half of the novel.
While I can see why people enjoy this one — it is layered and emotional (but manipulative, in my opinion) — with all re-imaginings, rather loose or faithful, it felt second-tier compared to the source material.
Rating (story): 2/5 stars
Rating (narration): 2/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: November 9 – November 23, 2023
Multi-tasking: Okay. Because the story is long and repetitive it is easy to follow and tune out, which means you’ll miss the few sections where the writing soars. Just skip the audiobook altogether, honestly.
