ARC Review: Such a Pretty Girl by T. Greenwood

Genre ~ historical fiction

Featuring ~ dual timeline (1970’s & 2019), childhood model/actress, jealous/neglectful/manipulative stage mother, suicide, sexual assault on a minor, pedophilia and references to pornography

POV ~ single 1st person

Release date ~ October 25, 2022

Page count ~ 318

My rating ~ 3.25⭐

My review:

Ryan was a child model and actress that looked much older than she was. She was put into predicaments that children her age should not be put into.

I really liked Ryan and Gilly’s friendship and how they remained best friends for decades. Gilly’s family were great too. Ryan and Sasha, her 18 year old daughter, were #motherdaughtergoals. But she probably felt like she had to work extra hard to be nothing like the mother she had.

I am not new to reading this authors work and she writes about some heavy topics. I’m usually all for it, but this one was slow going for me. I kept picking it up and putting it back down, which I hardly ever do. I usually like a dual timeline, but I wasn’t loving it for this one because I felt like I was forgetting what happened at the end of the last chapter with the same time period. Also, she was reminiscing while in the present, so that was messing me up too. The pace eventually picked up and I was ready to see how it would all play out. I was about to be really mad at the end there, but it didn’t go how I initially thought it was going to so phew.

About the picture ~ am I the only one that see’s a problem with the fact that Henri took this picture and that was somehow okay? Gives him a creepy vibe if you ask me and nobody batted an eye at that.

So overall, not my favorite, but I’ll still read more of her books.

*Thanks to Kensington Books, the author and NetGalley for the ARC. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

⬇Purchase links⬇

Amazon

Book blurb:

Award-winning author T. Greenwood explores the often-flickering line between woman and girl in this vividly lyrical drama alternating between an West Village artists community in 1970s New York and present day, as a former child actress is forced to confront the darkest secrets of her youth when a controversial photo taken of her as a preteen on the night of the 1977 blackout ignites a media firestorm.

Living peacefully in Vermont, Ryan Flannigan is shocked when a text from her oldest friend alerts her to a devastating news item. A controversial photo of her as a pre-teen has been found in the possession of a wealthy investor recently revealed as a pedophile and a sex trafficker—with an inscription to him from Ryan’s mother on the back.

Memories crowd in, providing their own distinctive pictures of her mother Fiona, an aspiring actress, and their move to the West Village in 1976. Amid the city’s gritty kaleidoscope of wealth and poverty, high art, and sleazy strip clubs, Ryan is discovered and thrust into the spotlight as a promising young actress with a woman’s face and a child’s body. Suddenly, the safety and comfort Ryan longs for is replaced by auditions, paparazzi, and the hungry eyes of men of all ages.

Forced to reexamine her childhood, Ryan begins to untangle her young fears and her mother’s ambitions, and the role each played in the fraught blackout summer of 1977. Even with her movie career long behind her, Ryan and Fiona are suddenly the object of uncomfortable speculation—and Fiona demands Ryan’s support. To put the past to rest, Ryan will need to face the painful truth of their relationship, and the night when everything changed.

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