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Hello Beautiful
May. 1st, 2025 03:06 pmHello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is my dad's choice for our next family book club meeting. On the face of it, it seemed like the kind of book that would really appeal to me - family saga covering multiple characters over several decades.
But I nearly DNF'd it about five times in the first 100 pages and only persevered because I wanted to be able to contribute fully to the book club discussion.
By the end (383 pages), I had noted down 14 times when I would otherwise have given up on the book. However, from pg 150, I also noted down 16 times when the story engaged me or made me feel something (other than frustration and annoyance)... So, more positive markers than negative ones - but still not great, since I never would have got to the more positive bits if I hadn't felt obliged to finish the book because of book club.
The basic problem was that the story and characters and nearly all of their decisions are really depressing and/or stupid and/or irritating. People make bad choices for bad reasons and make assumptions about each other without even really trying to communicate. It's probably all very realistic - but that doesn't make for an enjoyable reading experience or a compelling story.
Things did come together reasonably well in the end, but it was far too late by then to make me glad I'd persevered and it never really engaged my emotions in an impactful way.
But I nearly DNF'd it about five times in the first 100 pages and only persevered because I wanted to be able to contribute fully to the book club discussion.
By the end (383 pages), I had noted down 14 times when I would otherwise have given up on the book. However, from pg 150, I also noted down 16 times when the story engaged me or made me feel something (other than frustration and annoyance)... So, more positive markers than negative ones - but still not great, since I never would have got to the more positive bits if I hadn't felt obliged to finish the book because of book club.
The basic problem was that the story and characters and nearly all of their decisions are really depressing and/or stupid and/or irritating. People make bad choices for bad reasons and make assumptions about each other without even really trying to communicate. It's probably all very realistic - but that doesn't make for an enjoyable reading experience or a compelling story.
Things did come together reasonably well in the end, but it was far too late by then to make me glad I'd persevered and it never really engaged my emotions in an impactful way.
