Thanks to @randomhouse for the gifted copy of Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. I did not really enjoy this book. It’s kind of a reinspired Little Women, ish. Kind of. I just, was entirely bored. Did not care. It mostly tells their story through William, an extra tall kid turned basketball player with trauma because his baby sister died and his parents didn’t really love him after that. When he meets Julia at college and is swept up into her loving family of four sisters, he thinks that may fill the void in his heart. 

 

Spoilers ahead. Idk I just didn’t buy this one. Things like at the beginning of the book painting the mother as the tie that bound the family together, but then as soon as one of her daughters is about to have a baby unmarried she flees to Florida never to meet the baby? What?? And the dad being described as basically a useless lazy alcoholic before dying, but then as the book goes on the girls remember and love him so much more. Idk this entire book was not really believable in any type of way, there were too many contradictions between how characters were described vs how they were portrayed via their actions and choices. It felt gimmicky, it was sooo slow, I don’t think any sisters who were supposedly as close as they were said to be. Also I couldn’t even keep track of the younger sisters, they were such facades of characters, I kept mixing them up. Nobody besides William was really fully fleshed out or had much of a consistent personality. 

 

Suffice it to say I do not recommend this one 😬