Customer Reviews

Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

I happily remember "Choose Your Own Adventure" books from my youth, so I was in love with the idea of such a novel for adults when I purchased this book. After reading it, however, I wouldn't recommend it to others. McElhatton claims to have written death into every ending in the novel in an attempt to keep the book "real." However, a combination of laughably un-"real" plots rule that possibility out before the inevitable deaths ever occur. There's nothing wrong with camp, but perhaps it's just that the novel doesn't know what it wants to be that causes it to miss any target mark. Among the problems:

(1) The pace of the novel is a big mismatch: all sections of the book seem to cover a span of perhaps several years at the most, until the final sections, which usually cover multiple decades of life with no possibility to make further choices. Since you never become emotionally enaged with the "you" protagonist, those summaries of entire lifetimes are dull to the point of irrelevance.

(2) Since the life choices are often so unrealistic, the lack of emotional connection with the second-person narrator also makes all choices you can make very random. Choosing well vs. badly loses meaning when you're not choosing as a persona with a defined personality.

(3) With the youth novels, some choices would lead to immediate endings, whereas others had plots that would grow and include many more choices, which kept things interesting. In this novel, if one choice leads to a final episode ending in death, the other possible choice also leads to a final episode ending in death. The act of making a choice seems almost irrelevant, since you can be guaranteed that you won't "make it any further" by choosing well (or even luckily).

(4) The repeated plot sections either seemed to be a heavy-handed insistance on "realism" again (different choices can sometimes lead to the same endings, I get it), or laziness in writing. Either way, since the only real thing this novel has going for it is a large array and variety of life possibilities, those fairly frequent repeated plots struck a sour note with me. Again, if I remember correctly, the youth novels did it better: when a bit of plot was shared among several sections, the repeated bit would be a separate section linked to from multiple places. When this novel reprints the same text in several different sections, it caused less of an amused "hey, I've been to this section before!" reaction in me, and more a "oh god, here we go again."

So, camp or realism? The novel can't be both and do it well. I do wish this novel had been better, because we're overdue our adult "Choose Your Own Adventure." Hopefully the next person to write one will do it better.

This concept for this book was intriguing but the result was depressing. Yes, I did have some good outcomes but most were depressing and outright scary at times. I realize life can be complicated but this these endings were often ridiculous. Death by an apple! Where have we heard that before? Hopefully someone will do over the great "choose your adventure" for adults with a little more playfulness and a lot less grit.

"Pretty Little Mistakes" follows the adventures of a young, very naïve girl through her crazy wacky adventures after high school. As a guy, I found this book refreshingly wonderful. And no, I'm not gay.

So, why am I reading it? I remember as a kid reading a number of books where you choose your own adventure. This time, I finally get to read an adult adventure that makes me constantly guessing an outcome and always being wrong. It's amazing how many different characters she encounters on her travels and what rotten luck she has at times.

This is an adult book which is beyond refreshing. The writing will shock you and make you think at the same time. Many times I found myself laughing hysterically because of the situations she puts herself in. No way can you predict the outcome of a thread because Heather will lead you in a completely different direction.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants a really saucy, extremely witty adventure to read while sitting at Starbuck's having a latte. I guarantee that people around you will be looking at you weird as you say out loud, "No way!", and flip the page. Enjoy!!

The wait was worth it! After reading an article in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) a year and half ago (yikes!) I have been anxiously waiting for this book to be published. I happened to win a copy of the book (personally signed by Heather) and haven't been able to put it down. So far, I have been murdered, had a heart attack, died from eating a bad apple, been mistakenly shot, and lived to see old age numerous times! I cannot recommend this book enough. I think I'm making the "good" choice and it is a disaster. Make the "bad" one, and it works out great! Just like life! I can't wait for Heather's next book "Million Little Mistakes" where I win the lottery and have more adventures. I hope this is a long-running "mistakes" series for Heather. The thing I'm afraid of, though, is that we'll be inundated with other do-over novels and they won't be nearly as good as Heather's. Go ahead and make your Pretty Little Mistakes - you won't be disappointed! - Melissa White

This book is a terrific read, the ultimate day at the beach, lounging in the coffee shop, sitting in a hammock kind of thing. Lots of intrigue, romance, love, violence, sex and just general shenanigans to keep you captivated for long periods of time. It is geared to the lady folk, but as a guy who reads articles in his wife's copies of Elle , it kept me highly entertained.

Infinitely deeper then the choose your own adventure novels of my youth, "Pretty Little Mistakes"is a maze of situations, conflicts that set you galavanting around the globe.Much like life "the safe" choices don't necessarily get you to a happy ending, Of course "the wrong" ones don't necessarily get you one either. It's risque without Cliche. Torrid but not tawdry; the perfect prescription to cure the doldrums of a boring day

This might be Miss McElhatton's first book, but if this is any indication of her skill, then she is going to have a heck of a future! Can't wait to see the next 150 life options!
I am so totally hooked!

As soon as I found out about this book, I had to have it. I'm a little young to remember the whole "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel fad, but I've always loved stories I've seen set up like this online. And the cover art is the best I think I've ever seen: I don't want to get rid of this book just because it looks pretty in my bookcase.

But I've only read through a few different paths and skimmed through the rest of the book to know that I'm done with it entirely.

I'll start off by saying that I'm not a conservative or so religious that it makes me a prude or anything of that sort. But the fact that two options in, I WAS HAVING SEX WITH SOME HAIRY, POT-BELLIED MECHANIC IN FRONT OF HIS CREEPY DOG JUST TO GET MY CAR FIXED (!) really bothered me. (And no, that isn't one of the choices that I made.) All of the outcomes that I explored ended up like this (or worse!).

And yes, I did fully understand that I wouldn't like every outcome, but come on! The whole point of this book is to make decisions! And even in a fictional life, I wouldn't decide to be a completely one-dimensional, shallow idiot who would have sex with literally anyone and only cares about the size of a man's junk. (I'm not lying; the author goes far enough to print `SIZE MATTERS' on one of the pages. Thirty-eight times in a row. Yes, I counted.)

And a very minor thing: You can only be female. That bothered me at first, but now it doesn't. Because I don't feel bad for that half of our species that doesn't have to suffer through this.

So, yeah, two stars. It would have been only one, but that gosh darn circus-colored cover is so pretty to look at!

Heather McElhatton's Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel is more fun that a barrel of monkeys! Beginning after your high school graduation, you are asked to make a choice between going to school and travel. Based on that decision, you make another and another in this updated version of the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel. The possibilities are truly limitless, and the adventures extraordinary! You can read each "life" in about 20 or 30 minutes from start to finish, but you won't want to stop there. If you're like me, you'll read this book dozens of more times, trying out different decisions and getting outcomes that range from the hilarious to the heart-breaking.

Each life you live ends in death - sometimes a natural death after living a long life, sometimes death by accident, and sometimes murder. After each life ends, McElhatton describes the afterlife of that person, ranging from textbook descriptions of heaven and hell, to a "choose your own afterlife" sort of thing, to re-incarnation as a fish! It's all just utterly fascinating.

I couldn't stop myself from trying on new lives all week long! The funniest thing is that the life yielded by my first choices was the best one in my opinion. I ended up living in a stone cottage in the country with a husband, child, and grandchild that I loved. I died at a "ripe-old-age," after a life full of love, travel, adventure, and even a little fame - who wouldn't want to live such a life?

Just like in real life, the safe, honest, and "right" choices didn't always yield the best results. I really did get my share of horrifying death scenes in my exploration of Pretty Little Mistakes, but it was still fun to make those decisions in my quest for the perfect life.

Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel is an inspired idea, brilliantly conceived and expertly accomplished. It is one of those library books I wish I'd bought and not checked-out. After all, there are probably a hundred or more combinations that I didn't get to examine. I may need to run to the bookstore for this one...