Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel [Paperback]

Heather McElhatton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2007

There are hundreds of lives sown inside Pretty Little Mistakes, Heather McElhatton's singularly spectacular, breathtakingly unique novel that has more than 150 possible endings. You may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with your own corporation or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park.

Is it destiny or decision that controls our fate? You can't change your past and start over from scratch in real life—but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can! But be warned, choose wisely.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adults who remember the Choose Your Own Adventure YA novels are the target audience for this debut from Public Radio International producer McElhatton. The book opens with a female second person's high school graduation, which leads "you" to two possible choices: travel or college. Each succeeding section (mostly between one and four pages) similarly offers two options for proceeding, leading to an impressive array of possible developments, from a trip to Rome that can result in a live-in Italian artist boyfriend, to a dead-end job as a phone sex operator with the moniker of Stormy Sioux. Situations include the playfully surreal, such as a stint in a German circus as a nude ice dancer, and the tender, as in a life lived on the Iceland coast with a lovely, seal-obsessed child who has Down syndrome and a devoted scientist husband. There's also crystal meth addiction, rape, death by explosion, bursts of salty humor and moments of descriptive lyricism, especially in McElhatton's many vivid imaginings of the afterlife ("heaven is a junk shop... broken beauty everywhere"). Nevertheless, many situations are cartoonish; some of the events repeat or overlap; and "You" remains a cipher, making this "Do-Over Novel" more role-playing for the rut-stuck than a good read. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Remember the day of your high-school graduation, when the future positively percolated with possibilities? That's the moment of truth independent radio producer McElhatton seeks to recapture in this do-it-yourself debut boasting "one beginning, 150 endings." Like the Choose Your Own Adventure novels for young adults, this interactive offering puts readers in the driver's seat from page 1, when they must decide whether to attend college or travel. Wanderlusts might find themselves shacked up with an Italian sugar daddy or operating an award-winning Sicilian B and B. (They might also get knocked up by a swarthy janitor at a seedy Santa Monica motel or killed by a pipe-bomb while working as a relief doctor in Chad.) The academically inclined can wind up a successful feminist jeweler or a Denny's waitress felled by a piping-hot bowl of pea soup. In the end, McElhatton's first offering (inspired by failure to get her first novel published) reads more like tongue-in-cheek career counseling than serious literature. Still, dabbling in thoughts of one's destiny proves amusing in small doses (most entries are just a handful of pages). Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061133221
• ISBN-13: 978-0061133220
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,834 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

(McElhatton rhymes with TACKLE-LATIN, if that helps.)

Heather McElhatton is a writer and independent producer for Public Radio International. Her commentaries and
stories have been heard nationally on This American Life, Marketplace, Weekend America, Sound Money and The
Savvy Traveler. She also produced the radio literary series Talking Volumes. Heathers audio archive can be found at www.mpr.org

She has had several short stories published, including 'Red Shoes' which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2001. Writer/publisher Joyce Carol Oates published the story in
Princeton's literary magazine, The Ontario Review thatsame year.

Heather's new radio show is called STAGE SESSIONS and is held in front of a live audience at the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul, Minnesota. The show is aired on Minnesota Public Radio a week later. Guests have included Sebastian Junger, Ann Bancroft, Bill Holm and Robert Bly. Their work is combined with other musicians, poets and humorists.

Besides ongoing reporting and radio commentary, Heather will appear on Ira Glass's television version of This American Life, which is slated to premiere on Showtime this winter. Her debut novel is a choose-your-own-ending book for adults called Pretty Little Mistakes and will be published by HarperCollins in spring 2007.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Meh..., June 9, 2007

By 

E. Hanhan (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel (Paperback)

When I was younger, I loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books. So when I found this book sitting in my local Borders, I decided to go for it. But when I got home and started reading it, I was disappointed. The idea is a great one, but the writing is LACKING. Very much so. I don't think the "you" point of view is very interesting, and the book tries to move along each little plot too fast to make it fun and compelling to keep reading. I'm not done with the book, but I don't think my opinion will change very much. I would like to see some other authors try a grown up "CYOA", because it could easily be done better than McElhatton did.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars It was good in theory, January 22, 2008

By 

R. Webb - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel (Paperback)

I used to like the Choose Your Own Adventure books and thought that Pretty Little Mistakes would be a fun, light-hearted read. It started off as such, but it became tedious pretty quickly.

I do give both Heather McElhatton and whomever was her editor credit for handling so many story lines in one novel. Keeping track of that alone had to be a monumental task.

Every page or two, the reader is asked to make a decision. It could be something like go to college or travel. Or have sex with a mechanic to pay for your car or not. Or manufacture methamphetamine or not. At first it's fun, but it gets old. Because of the constant decision-making, there's no real character development so you don't really give to shakes what happens.

Some of the scenarios are fairly salacious, but I felt like the author didn't quite have the chops to pull it off. Reading it all felt to me like she was saying "Lookee here, I can write about having anal sex with your cult leader." I have nothing against salaciousness, but it just felt gratuitous. After the monkey-rape scene, I had to just quit reading.

I've heard that the author is writing an even larger collection as a follow-up. I won't be reading it.

30 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One choice really CAN change your life!, April 5, 2007

By 

Theresa H Warren (NC,USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel (Paperback)

My son was a big fan of choose your own adventure stories when he was younger, and I liked them too. So when I saw this book at the Harper Collins site, I was intrigued. I was chosen to read and review the book, and after finishing only one storyline, I was HOOKED! This book should be a must read for young women. At 19, I thought I could do anything that felt right and everything would turn out fine. Thirty years and many, many wrong turns later, I know every choice has it's consequences. I will be reading on this book until I have exhausted every possible ending, and I will highly recommend it to every woman I know!

PS. I STILL don't know how to find the box that asks others if this review was helpful!