Pretty

A Novel

By: Jillian Lauren

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

An electrifying debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls.

Jillian Lauren’s breathtakingly honest memoir, Some Girls, earned both critical praise and outstanding sales. In Pretty, Lauren delivers on her promise as a “natural storyteller” (Los Angeles Weekly) with a powerful novel about a broken girl looking to be saved.

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Bebe Baker is an ex-everything: ex-stripper, ex-Christian, ex–drug addict, ex–pretty girl. It’s been one year since the car accident that killed her boyfriend left her scarred and shaken. Flanked by an eccentric posse of friends, she is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house while trying to finish cosmetology school. Amid the rampant diagnoses, over-medication, compulsive eating, and acrylic nails of Los Angeles, Bebe looks for something to believe in before something—her past, the dangerously magnetic men in her life, her own bad choices—knocks her off course again.

Jillian Lauren is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Some Girls and has an MFA from Antioch University. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, and their son.

©2011 Jillian Lauren (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Utterly riveting. Jillian Lauren renders the taste and feel of wretched excess—be it sex, drugs, food, or Los Angeles—with a savage veracity and style all her own…Jillian Lauren is the real deal.” (Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight)

Couldn’t get past chapter 2

Not engaging
Couldn’t connect with any of the characters
Her bio was interesting
I was hoping for more

Pretty is pretty awful.

I read this author's memoir entitled Some Girls. This. book is well written and quite insightful. Pretty is depressing and not worth finishing.

Not for me

What would have made Pretty better?

This book is very religious and that's fine if that's what you like to read. I just felt it was too much. There's literally moments when the character mantras about Jesus being in everyday objects. "Jesus is in my nails. Jesus is in the stucco." Etc. It's not my cup of tea. I stopped reading when I heard the character talk about how unbaptized people go to hell.

Any additional comments?

Should be mentioned that the book has religious overtones.

Just wish ending was more intense

I feel like they led up to something the entire book but when it came down to the ending it wasn’t very much in terms of shock factor or really very dramatic as I had hoped. Maybe it was supposed to be read differently? I did find it mostly engaging and fun to listen to, a bit depressing but I get it.

A surprising find, haunting, revealing & dangerous

Have you listened to any of Julia Whelan’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Julia Whelan is brilliant -- brilliant -- in her performance. She brought this book to life with all of her voices. "Pretty" is a wonderful book, and Julia brought out ever inch of the wonder.

Any additional comments?

I love a book when it makes me want to both smile and cry at the end, and this novel does that. It is a gripping story, dark but alive, and it is beautifully written -- I picked this up after plowing through "Some Girls," and as much as I liked that story, I loved the way this book was written. It is playful and sad, it is dramatic and droll, it finds signs in the clouds and spiders & ponders, ponders, ponders. This book got stuck in my head and I like that, and I ended up replaying the ending three times, which is rare for me. Is this book for everyone? No, but it was for me, and I think it should be required reading for therapists.