So Much Pretty

By: Cara Hoffman

Narrated by: Aimée Bruneau

The Pipers are a family built on optimism. Claire and Gene move with their precocious, beguiling daughter, Alice, to Haeden, New York, for a fresh start. In doing so, they unwittingly rewrite the story of her life. Wendy White, a late-blooming young woman, mindful of family and home, has strong roots in Haeden. Her story has a beginning and an end, but is missing the most important piece: the middle. What happened to Wendy White?

Stacey Flynn is a reporter, both a seeker and a teller of stories. It is gritty, relentless, and ultimately reckless Flynn who will chronicle Wendy White’s existence from all the fragments she can find, and forge a path toward the end. But only we will ever know the whole story.

©2011 Cara Hoffman (P)2011 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

"[D]ark and chilling... [A] gripping novel." ( Library Journal)

"A mixture of The Lovely Bones and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.... Let's hope we will be seeing more of this talented new author." ( Booklist)

Everyone should read this book

Craft, story, analysis, and nuanced critique, all original and expertly synthesized. I’m thrilled and heartbroken (in the best way).

Good book ...

A little sad, but worth the listen. Liked the author and the characters and would listen to this author again.

Just OK

I expected quite a lot from So Much Pretty and having read it now, I'm a bit let down. I think it would work better in print. The material is a melange of filed statements, one-person interviews, school essays, diary entries. They are dated, but skip around in time. I often wished I could go back and see where this bit fell in the overall plot "development" which I put in quotes because it was never developed, just finally conveyed enough information to get what happened. The narration was OK given those constraints. It had to be by a woman because the overall message is that men are bad, bad, bad.