An excellent, thought-provoking read about the sexualization of a preteen actress during the tumultuous late 1970's New York City. I was about that age growing up in the NYC burbs and the historical setting was dead-on accurate and really brought back so many memories. While the setting was nostalgic the themes explores are very now and timely.

A timely literary mystery with a great cast but definitely slower paced than what i was expecting. I did like the alternate timeline with this one and the different reveals as I approached the finale.

This is my first book by this author but definitely won’t be my last. Excellent, heartfelt story of a young woman who is coming to grips with her past as an actress and her mother who didn’t always have her best interests in mind. Ryan had a unique childhood. With a mother who was always trying to make it as an actress, it ended up quite a surprise when Ryan herself was the one who gets discovered and begins a successful career. Later in life when a scandal erupts that involves her mother and a man who abused many young women in the profession, Ryan must revisit her past no matter how painful that may be. This book was beautifully written and will stay with the reader for a long time.

Ryan Flannigan, a former child actress, received a phone call informing her that a photograph taken of her after a horrible night of a blackout in 1977 has been found in the possession of a successful businessman/investor who has recently been revealed as being a sex trafficker and pedophile. The photo had been given to the man by Ryan's mother who inscribed the back.

When the photographer, Henri, who was like a father to her, commits suicide, Ryan returns to NYC to attend his memorial. There she looks back on her childhood and her relationship with her mother, Fiona, an aspiring actress who had to take a backseat when it was Ryan who obtained fame.

Now Ryan's mother, Fiona, is hiding while the FBI are searching for her to question her about the photo and her connection to the investor/pedophile.

The book is told through two timelines 1977 and 2019. Ryan looks back on her life, her modeling and acting career, those in her life, and her mother's role in all of it. This is a heartbreaking book that looks at the life of a former child star. This book had me thinking about Drew Barrymore, Brooke Shields, and Jodie Foster. How they were forced to grow up at young ages. This book has a Jeffrey Epstein slant while looking at sexualized children, neglect, stage moms, friendship, and love.

I enjoyed how Ryan found her own family unit with Henri and Gilly. I also liked the relationship she had with her daughter. But my heart broke for her when looking back at how she was raised and how her "good mother" was not always so good. She was a parentified child living in all too grown-up world.

Thought provoking, heartbreaking and raw.

I don't think I've loved a novel this much since 2018. And I read a ton.

‘’I am a grown woman, a mother myself. A mother who would never leave her daughter alone to fend for herself when life got hard.’’

I was expecting this one to be interesting - I’m blown away

This is my first ever T. Greenwood novel but definitely not my last. This novel follows Ryan, whose mother uproots the family from their artistic haven in Vermont and moves them to Westbeth (a real place!) in New York City in a vain attempt to find success as an actress. Ryan’s entire childhood is dictated by her mother’s moods and desires.

Fiona, a narcissistic, neglectful, and manipulative mother, is furious that her daughter Ryan was noticed first, but it doesn't stop her from pushing for Ryan to do commercials, films, modelling, everything.
Fiona is rarely honest, but when it comes to cashing Ryan, 10,'s cheques, she has no difficulty.

Now a grownup and a mother, Ryan learns of even more deceit when she hears that the FBI suspects her mother of being part of a child paedophilia network.

By dividing the narrative between the present and the past, Greenwood helps us better comprehend Ryan's connection with her mother and her intense need for her acceptance. Ryan’s childhood is full of abuse, neglect, and walking on eggshells trying to understand what she ever did to make her mother hate her so much. The writing was divided between the present and the past was easy to follow, well timed, and presented in a way that kept me interested throughout.

This novel explores the awful sense of never being enough, never doing enough, and of what happens to a child who just isn’t loved quite enough. This was a brave and deeply affecting novel I recommend to every single person out there.

Read this if you loved:

- I’m Glad My Mom Died
- Lolita
- The Jeffrey Epstein scandal

Thank you to Netgalley and Kensington Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book about growing up in the 70’s with a self-centered mom, no dad or siblings. The mom is a wannabe actress who goes to many auditions and never gets a part. There are other male and sibling figures in Ryan’s life. This is juxtaposed with her life in 2019 and how she raises her daughter. The story unfolds very slowly with just enough tension to compel you to continue reading, but not so much that it’s forced. It was interesting to be taken back to those times. I also appreciated the two main settings of big city New York and rural Vermont. Really, this book is so worth reading. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC

Thank you Netgalley and thank you Kensington books for the opportunity to read this book early. All opinions are my own.
Another great book by T. Greenwood and I’ve read many of hers, been long since a fan for many years.
I was so excited to read this and T. Greenwood did not disappoint. The pages turned so easy and left me eager to read more.
Great book, be sure and look for a copy at a book store near you or online of course in e-edition. Pub Day is October 25,2022!

I loved the setting and time period for this novel. New York City in the 1970’s was the most perfect backdrop for this wild ride of a story. This book is written so beautifully and it’s fast-paced, exciting, disturbing, and it’s a story that’s going to stick with me for months to come. It’s suspenseful as you’re wondering what happened to Ryan, a child star, during the huge city blackout. This book really shows how child actors are exploited by the people in their lives and in Hollywood.

I liked the alternative timelines - 1977 and 2019 - and really felt for Ryan the whole time and wanted nothing but the worst for her mother. This novel offered no sympathy for abusers and I honestly appreciated that.

Beautiful and affecting, achingly bittersweet with some very touching moments of joy, SUCH A PRETTY GIRL is a powerhouse of a novel that will stay with me long after I read the last page. Greenwood depicts a hauntingly evocative and complex. mother-daughter relationship between Ryan and Fiona, and has brought to life New York City during the Blackout Summer of 1977 in all its dilapidated glory. This story about childhood, fame, greed, and betrayal, all seen through the eyes of a precocious and sensitive child thrust into a world she doesn't understand, is a great one.

I was looking forward to this book by T Greenwood. I've really enjoyed others she has written.

The subject matter is very relevant to the present, with the Me Too Movement and the Jeffrey Epstein victims.

In the beginning, I was struggling. It was not the subject matter, but the writing style. It has two timelines. One is 1976-77. The other is the “present”, being 2019. Even when we are in the present, much of the time, our protagonist (Ryan) is talking about the past. I find that to be very disjointed. But, eventually I got into the rhythm of the timelines.

The story is about a child actress/model and her mother, a stage mother. The mother lives her life vicariously through her famous daughter. It is not hard to figure out that the storyline is based on Brook Shields and her mother, right down to being the model for Love's Baby Soft (a fragrance product from the late 1970s with a questionable ad campaign).

In some ways, this book reminds me of I'm Glad My Mother Died. In this book, no matter how much young Ryan is manipulated by her mother, she still loves her and worries about her. The mother seems to be narcissistic, self-serving, oblivious and many other adjectives.

There are many secondary characters in the book. I did not really warm up to any of them.

The interesting, true-to-life fact in the book that I enjoyed learning about was Westbeth. It is an apartment building complex that was started in 1970 to provide housing to artists (of all kinds) and their families. The establishment still stands. I think it is a much grander establishment now than it was when Ryan and her mother lived there.

In the end, I am disappointed with this book. And, I am probably in the minority. I see that other reviewers are liking it much more than I did. But, I always maintain that not every book is for everyone.

The plot had a lot of potential but the execution fell flat. It has just “meh” for me. When I was about 75 % through the book, everything started to come together. But, that is much too long to wait for a story to grab me. I have read many of Ms. Greenwood's previous books and I have been able to give them excellent ratings. I will still look forward to the next one. She has had a great track record with me up until this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.

I don't even know how to go about explaining how much I liked this book. Ryan, our main character, is a former child star trying to escape that past, and raise her own daughter. As a child she was known for having a face that was much older than her age. This resulted in her modeling in some pictures that maybe a child shouldn't have been in. Those pictures weren't meant to get out, except that Ryan's mom (who she has an NC relationship with) GAVE a copy of that picture to a man who is now being investigated for sex trafficking. It is very reminiscent of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, but told from the side of the actual victims. I loved the back and forth between the past and present, and I understood Ryan's need to protect her daughter and raise her entirely different than the way she had been raised. You can't help but root for both child Ryan and adult Ryan to finally find the peace they're continually searching for. The characters were well rounded, and I couldn't put this book down until I finished it. I would definitely recommend it, and I will be reading more of T. Greenwood's work.

3.75 stars
Boy do I love a complicated mother/daughter relationship. I love seeing a child realize that their parent wasn’t a good parent at all while being able to recognize they tried hard to be. All of Ryan’s friends are just lovely. I love her relationship with her own daughter. It was great to see at least one healthy mother:daughter relationship. I enjoyed seeing the characters evolve throughout the years and decades.
This book was solid. It was boring at points but the last quarter got me reading through it quickly. This book mirrors a lot of those movies we’ve seen about child actors and their parents that love though them who are also narcissists.
If you’ve never read a book centering a child actor who was sexualized and had a neglectful parent then this is probably worth the read.

I like this book. I like it’s southern charm. Two sisters in their 60s have kept a secret for 40 years. One of the sisters was so traumatized by what happened that she hasn’t spoken for 40 years. That in itself enticed me to read more and more. Couldn’t wait to find out what it was that was so traumatic. Developed characters. Family relationships problems and the mystery. Wonderful narrator. Thank you to the publisher in Netgalley for providing this audiobook to me

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington books for the ARC!
I really enjoyed reading the story of Ryan Flannigan, child star/model. Her mother Fiona who longed to be a star but was not so she lived her life through her daughter. We follow Ryan and her mother from Vermont to New York where Ryan is discovered. Fiona is overjoyed (but I sense a little jealousy) that Ryan was discovered. We read about the ups and downs the ins and outs of a child star with a controlling (and sometimes absent) mother. Author did a great job.
Will recommend. And off to seek more from this author

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was not expecting this story to be so moving. A stunning portrait of the damage we can do to our children, the juxtaposition of the present day and the past events that shaped Ryan’s life were heartbreaking and yet beautiful. I could not put this story down.

T. Greenwood has once again fashioned a disturbing historical fiction. This time, she tells the story of a child actress in late 1970s NYC. Ryan’s mother was the one who wanted fame, but it was her daughter that became a star. But now, in 2019, a controversial picture of her from those days has been found in the home of a child predator. A picture signed by her mother.
The story goes back and forth in time, always told from Ryan’s POV. When the photographer who took the picture commits suicide, Ryan finally returns to New York for his memorial service. With the authorities looking to question her mother, Ryan is forced to confront the past.
Greenwood has totally captured the NYC of the 1970s- a time before it was cleaned up and sanitized. It actually comes across as a character in its own right, from artistic Greenwich Village to sleazy Times Square. I hadn’t realized that Westbeth Artist Housing was a real place.
Once again, Greenwood has created a story full of heartbreak and sorrow. My emotions toggled between wanting to hold Ryan as a young girl and wanting to throttle her mother. There’s a sense of unease and tension throughout both time frames.
This book made me think back to how the sexualization of young girls was just accepted in those days. The ads. The movies. The book even cites Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, but this made me think more of Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby.
My thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for an advance copy of this book.

I stayed up SO LATE because I could not put this book down! I’ve read every single one of Greenwood’s books and I always say “this is her best one yet” but this really is her best one! If you like this one check out her book The Hungry Season. Such a fan!! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-galley.

*Thank you to Kensington Books and NetGalley for the ARC*

I think this is a book I will never be able to articulate/verbalise/express the way I felt reading it, but the fact that I couldn’t put it down and finished it at 6:45am should be some kind of an answer.

Such a Pretty Girl was intense, heavy, and had a depth to it that I haven’t experienced while reading in a looong time. It somehow felt fast paced but simultaneously slow enough for each character to be developed in such a detailed manner.

The author has done such a great job writing the nuanced relationship Ryan shares with her mother (and the contradiction of what she shares with her own daughter), you truly feel frustrated and heartbroken as the excuses, belittling, and gaslighting snowball over the years.

[Spoiler-ish?] One thing that I really appreciated was how there was no need/push for the protagonist to accept an unnecessary - nonexistent - apology. When Ryan went back to Nick’s house, I was so so so worried because I knew her decision at that point would make or break the book for me. Thankfully, it made it.

4 stars*

T. Greenwood is in a category by herself. She has not written a single book that I did not devour, enjoy, and spend significant time pondering once I finished.

Such a Pretty GIrl is no exception. At its heart, it is a mother-daughter story, but it is so much more.

Ryan Flannagan is a child model/actor in the 1970s whose mother, Fiona, gives her life over for her success/fame. If you believe Fiona's version, that is. If you look a little closer, its more likely that Fiona used Ryan to achieve fame and success and financial stability when she realized her own dreams of acting success weren't going to pan out.

The tale is told in varying timelines, going between the 1970s in an artist colony/building in New York City to Ryan's life in 2019 when she returns to New York with her own daughter to reckon with the fallout when the FBI comes looking for Fiona in the wake of a child sex scandal dating back 40 years.

Reminiscent of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, aspects of Brooke Shields' fame, and with just enough raw vulnerability of the mother/daughter dynamic thrown in...this book is a winner.

Like everything by T. Greenwood, I highly recommend this one.

3.5 Stars

I was drawn to read this book by the setting of New York City in the summer of 1977. I had seen a documentary about how on a very hot evening in August 1977 there was a NYC blackout resulting in chaos and looting, an incident that looms large in this story. I was a teenager during this time and related to a lot of things discussed in the book like television shows (Sonny & Cher, Donny & Marie), movies (Taxi Driver, Rosemary's Baby) products (Baby Love, Jean Nate) and places (Studio 54). Also, the idea of a pre-teen young girl being used in modelling and acting media inappropriate for her age reminded me of Brooke Shields. Shields was in the movie "Pretty Baby" in 1978 (at the age of 12) playing a child prostitute. I have a lot of nostalgia for the seventies and hoped to drink in all of those warm and fuzzy feelings. I later realized this same author wrote "Keeping Lucy", a previous book of hers I had rated five stars.

The main character Ryan is an eleven year old girl living with her fledgling actress mother Fiona in a quaint sort of Summer Stock resort in Vermont, but they live there all year round. Ryan has never known the identity of her father, but she thrives in this gentle community flanking a river where actor friends join them in the summer months. Ryan is very content in this quiet refuge, but is suddenly upended when her mother wants to move to New York City for acting opportunities. Ryan and her mother are invited to stay with actor friends in their iconic artist community apartment Westbeth flanking Bank Street in NYC. Although quite large, it was a familial atmosphere where everyone kept their doors unlocked and you could just pop in. Ryan made many friends here, especially the French photographer Henri. He was very friendly and helpful, and had a key to the rooftop where he fed a family of cats.

The book has dual timelines of 1976-1977 and 2019, with the dual locales of Vermont and New York City. As the book begins Ryan is now an adult with a college age daughter of her own, and has just found out that Henri is dead. She must return to NYC for the funeral/memorial, but circumstances are further complicated by the resurfacing of a scandalous photo Henri took of Ryan during the 1977 blackout. It is now a media scandal, dredging up Ryan's very first (controversial) movie "Midway Girl".

I enjoyed reading about the apartment building and its welcoming courtyard, which was a private place for all the tenants to be communal, relax, and for the kids to play games. I didn't like the character of the mother Fiona, who was very selfish, cunning, and manipulative- but was necessary for the conflict in the story. It took until about 80% into the book to reveal the exact details of the blasphemous photo taken of Ryan during the blackout, and by then I felt really put out for keeping me on a string that long. I found the ending a bit nonsensical after all that waiting, and was just like, "Oh, OK"- and the book was over. As an aside, this may sound petty to some but I find it annoying when you have a female character and the author uses a name normally associated with males. Why confuse things for the reader? Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the book, but it's not the author's best work. It still was a cool idea to draw from iconic moments in the seventies.

Thank you to the publisher Kensington Books who provided an advance reader copy via NetGalley.