01/22/2026
HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano
Despite a bit of a slow start, this novel quickly built and completely hooked me to the point of never wanting to stop reading/listening.
Set in Chicago (a city close to my heart) it follows the story of a lonely boy, William, who grows up in a loveless home with parents who never recover from the loss of their first child. William’s main passion is basketball from an early age until he meets Julia Padavano and, through her influence, pursues a career as a professor instead. He is soon absorbed into her large, colorful family and we, as readers, fall in love with every member of it as well: her three younger sisters Sylvie, Emeline and Cecilia, the matriarch Rose – a practical, no-nonesense woman – and the idealist Charlie, a loving father who enjoys Whitman’s poetry.
The novel spans decades and follows the family through many ups and downs. William and Julia marry and have a child but their marriage disintegrates as William’s depression pulls him further and further away from everything he has convinced himself of wanting.
Cecilia has a child out of wedlock and is shunned and kicked out of the house by Rose. Emeline follows her sister and supports her in raising her daughter Izzy. And Sylvie, a bookworm who spends most of her days working at the library, is William’s only true support and the two eventually fall in love.
I don’t want to give away any further plot points but the story has a beautiful albeit bittersweet conclusion.
Napolitano’s characters come to life through her captivating writing, making you love them, then resent them, eventually forgiving them and ultimately just rooting for them all to reconcile. Although this may at first seem to be a story about William, it is really a story about family and about the power of sisterhood. As different as two human beings can be, and as fraught as their relationship may be, their shared bloodline and history will always connect them. And most importantly, despite everything they may say or do to each other, one cannot live fully without the other. In the words of the author: “Grief is love. Forgiveness is too.”
