Why did I love this book?
I always wanted a sister. Maybe that’s why I loved Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, a novel that dives deep into the complicated relationships among four sisters.
There is much sorrow and loss in this novel, and I admire how Napolitano creates powerful emotional resonance without crossing the line into sentimentality. If there’s a predominant theme, I would say it’s forgiveness. I shed tears of recognition—these characters’ loves and losses and their deceits and mistakes seem all too familiar even though their experiences may not be mine or yours. Napolitano’s characters resonate with love in all its messiness and complexity.
16 authors picked Hello Beautiful as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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…