Pretty

July 18, 2011
Beth "Bebe" Baker's continued attempts at sobriety reveal themes of rebirth and redemption in this solid fiction debut from Lauren (Some Girls), a performer who's worked with Richard Foreman and the Wooster Group. After a single kiss from Aaron, a horn player in a jazz band gigging in her town, this Ohio girl hops the bus and goes on tour with them. But the band gets stuck in L.A., Bebe finds work as a stripper, and her and Aaron's drug use results in a car crash that kills him and leaves her with significant physical and emotional scars. A year later, Bebe is still in a rehab/vocational facility in east L.A. Though she's trying to finish beauty school, her continued risky behavior and involvement with Jake, a dangerous schizophrenic, jeopardizes her recovery. Though Lauren's novel is well-crafted, quick, and absorbing, Bebe's obvious self-sabotageâ dating Jake, breaking curfew, falling off the wagonâmake her a hard character to sympathize with. You want her to care about herself, her life, her future, but when enlightenment comes, allowing her to clearly see the world, including herself and Aaron (who she's grieved as something of a saint), it's too little too late to earn the happy ending.

August 1, 2011
What to make of 25-year-old Bebe? Living in a halfway house and studying in a nearby beauty college, she's counting down the days to graduation while struggling to stay clean and sober. But all those initials attached to her seem to conspire against it: MDD (major depressive disorder), CD (chemical dependency), and ADD (attention deficit disorder). And the reader is tempted to add one more, MEM, for her unshakable memories of her alcoholic musician father, of her experiences as an exotic dancer, and of her late boyfriend, killed in an automobile accident. As for the present, her current boyfriend is a schizophrenic who often thinks he is Jesus. Despite all this, Bebe finds support and a degree of hope from the other women who live in the halfway house and from her fellow students at the beauty college. Although published as an adult book, this hard-edged coming-of-age tale will find an audience on both sides of the adult-YA divide.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)