
Hello Beautiful
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Maura Tierney
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By:
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Ann Napolitano
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • MORE THAN ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! From the author of Dear Edward comes a “powerfully affecting” (People) family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
“Another tender tearjerker . . . Napolitano chronicles life’s highs and lows with aching precision.”—The Washington Post
ONE OF THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, Time, Vogue, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Post, She Reads, Bookreporter
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 year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all. With the Padavanos, William experiences a newfound contentment; every moment in their house is filled with loving chaos.
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters’ unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
©2023 Ann Napolitano (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Radiant and brilliantly crafted . . . Napolitano’s [work] resists the easy satisfactions of the sentimental and never settles for simple answers to emotional predicaments faced by her characters.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“This sumptuous family saga is one of those rare novels whose singular characters are so beautifully rendered, it’s as if they’re your best friends, and you’re grateful to be in their orbit.”—Oprah Quarterly
“Hello Beautiful will make you weep buckets because you come to care so deeply about the characters and their fates. . . . [Napolitano] compels us to contemplate the complex tapestry of family love that can, despite grief and loss, still knit us together. She helps us see ourselves—and each other—whole.”—The Washington Post
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Hello Beautiful
- Break Free from the Chains of Regret, Self Doubt and Comparison, and Discover the Freedom, Power and Beauty of Being the Real You
- By: Keryl Pesce
- Narrated by: Keryl Pesce
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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When was the last time you felt good about yourself, worthy, and capable of achieving what it is you want out of life? If it's been so long you can't remember, Keryl Pesce has a few bits of insight for you. In this enlightening, heart-warming book, you will discover the source of your inner critic and why the popular advice to "just crush it" is bad advice.
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Amazing...
- By Jessica Jenkins on 02-24-21
By: Keryl Pesce
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A Good Hard Look
- A Novel
- By: Ann Napolitano
- Narrated by: Debra Monk
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Crippled by lupus at 25, celebrated author Flannery O'Connor was forced to leave New York City and return home to Andalusia, her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. Years later, as Flannery is finishing a novel and tending to her menagerie of peacocks, her mother drags her to the wedding of a family friend....
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A rare five star
- By Jennifer Peden on 02-08-23
By: Ann Napolitano
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The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
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Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
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Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
- Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
- By: Gail Honeyman
- Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office.
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Please be warned
- By N. Thompson on 06-20-17
By: Gail Honeyman
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Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
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So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
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Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
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Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
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My Name Is Lucy Barton
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself.
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Because we all love imperfectly.
- By Bonny on 01-15-16
By: Elizabeth Strout
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Mad Honey
- A Novel
- By: Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Carrie Coon, Key Taw, Jodi Picoult, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
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Good writing but...
- By Suzanna on 10-08-22
By: Jodi Picoult, and others
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Gabrielle Zevin
- Narrated by: Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have heard before.
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This book sucked the life out of me
- By RMan on 08-08-22
By: Gabrielle Zevin
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Lessons in Chemistry
- A Novel
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
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Making my 3 adult daughters read this
- By Teresa H. on 04-07-22
By: Bonnie Garmus
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Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
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Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
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All the Colors of the Dark
- By: Chris Whitaker
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the smalltown of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.
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Best book of 2024
- By Jmo930 on 07-04-24
By: Chris Whitaker
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Trust (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
- By: Hernan Diaz
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Jonathan Davis, Mozhan Marnò, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
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Before Purchasing
- By JLDLOfficial on 08-13-22
By: Hernan Diaz
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The Most Fun We Ever Had
- A Novel
- By: Claire Lombardo
- Narrated by: Emily Rankin
- Length: 20 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In this “rich, complex family saga” (USA Today) full of long-buried family secrets, Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest.
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Wonderful book
- By Kaysi12 on 07-08-19
By: Claire Lombardo
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The Paper Palace
- A Novel
- By: Miranda Cowley Heller
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a 50-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace” - the family summer place she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: Last night, Elle and her oldest friend, Jonas, crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love.
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The story has too much child abuse discription
- By DTurek on 07-14-21
What listeners say about Hello Beautiful
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- melatonin
- 03-25-23
Couldn’t get past the monotone narration
Really couldn’t push past the monotone and emotionless narration. Not engaging at all. Almost as if the performance sucked the life out of whatever structure and flow this book had. Returned the audiobook and going to read paperback version instead.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Tiffany Begley
- 04-16-23
Mixed Emotions about the Book
At first I didn’t like the narrator but then I realized that she fit the narrative. And then I realized I didn’t like the story. I mean I liked the story okay at times but I couldn’t put my finger on what it is about this book that is slaying people and eliciting 5 star reviews. Closer to the end I was choked with emotion at the story of Silvie but feel neutral about most parts of the book. I don’t know. I’m not sad I listened to it and it was a good story but also not a favorite for me.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Nancy A. Lyon
- 03-24-23
Disappointed
An emotional story of a family with struggles, love, and loss. It’s ok. And while I admire Maura Tierney as an actor, she is not a good narrator. Her reading is very flat and she’s an odd choice for such a book as this. Her reading is monotone and emotionless and not performed or narrated in an engaging manner.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-02-23
I did'nt want the book the end!!
When I first started the book I thought it was starting out pretty slow and didn't know if I could continue, but I did and I couldn't stop listening.
It has many different characters and the author took their time in introducing them so we could remember their own personal story throughout. You could feel all the characters emotions throughout this book, you could feel when they were happy and excited but also their sadness and heart break. You will want to smile one minute and cry the next. Will immediately be listening to another book from this Author!
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- Margaret K.
- 04-03-23
Wonderfully written.
This author has great insight into the human condition and wonderful depth of each character. I loved it. Also the narration was pleasant
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- NTexHiker
- 04-10-23
Families are complicated
My 1st 5 star book for the year. I liked how the complexity of each character grew and was revealed over time. Each character deals with love, loss, pain in their own way. Each character has the choice to heal, or not, over time. Beautifully captures how we view our siblings and our future lives unfolding as children isn’t usually how life plays out. We can’t help who we love. We don’t know what broken rules we can forgive in relationships until it happens to us. If you’ve been taken in and loved by a new family after not feeling loved at home, “Hello Beautiful” will resonate within you.
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- Karen McAuley
- 03-26-23
Inside the world of a complex family of sisters
Compelling, dramatic, very psychological. Sometimes seeing inside these characters seems too much! Their connections seem unbearable! But this might be jealousy on my part—I’m a woman in a disconnected family.
Napolitano pulls the closeness, the injuries, the secrets revealed, all together in the final scene like a good novelist. Would real life be so satisfying!
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- Amy DiBianca
- 04-08-23
I never write reviews but...
My first real review after reading hundreds of books on audible. This book was precious. It tugged at my heart in every way. I can't explain how simple it was and yet so incredibly complicated when delving into issues like pride, disappointment, tradition, abandonment, depression, friendship and unconditional love. I could not put it down, it felt like a gift. And I would ignore any negative comments about the narrator, Her narration was simple and perfect in the sense that she let the words speak for themselves...she didn't need to use charactery voices or tricks...she got out of the way of the author just telling a beautiful and soulful story in itself. I read Dear Edward and it was nothing compared to this, in my opinion. This one will become a movie I'm sure, and I cannot even begin to imagine many actors and actresses who could come close to nailing these characters. Really masterful.
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- Anonymous
- 04-10-23
Well woven
Hard to put down reading in 2 days. Not necessarily believable story of sisters living on top of each other but it worked to support the parts.
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- Pamela Simpson
- 03-27-23
Enthralling
I was completely caught up on this book and the world the author created. The narrator's vice is pleasant, she reads fluently, and get pronunciation is excellent. However, her tone and her choice if which words in a sentence to emphasize are odd. I found this irritating and distracting.
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