LET’S CURL UP WITH “PRETTY LITTLE WORLD”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is Pretty Little World, by Melissa DePino, “a skilled, funny, and highly engaging examination of family, love, and marriage…This book is a win.” —Meg Mitchell Moore, author of The Admissions…

 

 

 

 

Intro:  If Celia had been paying attention, she might have noticed the signs—the pipes clanging much too loudly when she turned on the shower, the water pressure dropping off just enough to prevent her from completely rinsing the conditioner out of her long blond hair, the dirty water that had backed up into the utility sink in the laundry room.  But Celia was never good at noticing things like that.

She had given herself twenty minutes to throw in the laundry, shower, blow-dry her hair, and get dressed before going downstairs to hurry the kids outside for some fresh air.  It was tight, but in about half an hour she had the three of them—two boys and a girl all under the age of seven—dressed and out front to play.  Two big orange cones blocked the end of the small tree-lined city street where she and her husband, Mark, had lived for the past eight years.

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Teaser:  They sat across the cafe table from each other in the spotless eat-in kitchen area at the back of the house, breaking off pieces of flaky croissant oozing with melted chocolate and sipping their coffee while debating whether or not you could ever have too many shoes.  Still on her spending binge, Stephanie had just bought three pairs in the basement sale at Anthropologie, so she didn’t have much room to talk, even though she was adamant that Nikki weed through the more than forty pairs that she had accumulated over the years. (50%).

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Synopsis: On a cozy street in Philadelphia, three neighboring families have become the best of friends. They can’t imagine life without one another—until one family outgrows their tiny row house. In a bid to stay together, a crazy idea is born: What if they tear down the walls between their homes and live together under one roof? And so an experiment begins.

Celia and Mark now have the space they need. But is this really what Celia’s increasingly distant husband wants? Stephanie embraces the idea of one big, happy family, but has she considered how it may exacerbate the stark differences between her and her husband, Chris? While Hope always wanted a larger family with Leo, will caring for all the children really satisfy that need?

Behind closed doors, they strive to preserve the closeness they treasure. But when boundaries are blurred, they are forced to question their choices…and reimagine the true meaning of family.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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