BOOKISH FRIDAY: “SUCH A PRETTY GIRL”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which we  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Today’s feature is one of my newest books:  Such a Pretty Girl, by T. Greenwood.

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Book Beginning:

Lost River, Vermont

August 2019

It is Sunday morning, early.  Mist hovers over the river outside the window, insinuates itself through the trees.  Sasha is still out on the sunporch daybed where she has been sleeping all summer, but I’ve been up since my phone started buzzing at six a.m. with text after text from Gilly.  Call me.

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Friday 56:

“It’ll be fun!” he promised, but a pit had settled into my stomach and stayed there, taking root, I thought.  I was homesick already.

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Synopsis:  In 1970s New York, her innocence is seductive.
Four decades later, it’s a crime…

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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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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