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Heather McElhatton

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Pretty Little Mistakes (Do Over Novels Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Heather McElhatton (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 175 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Do-Over

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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

About the Author

Heather McElhatton produced the award-winning literary series Talking Volumes. Her commentaries have been heard on This American Life, Marketplace, Weekend America, Sound Money, and The Savvy Traveler. She lives in Key West with her pug, Walter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Pretty Little Mistakes

A Do-Over NovelBy Heather McElhatton

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2007 Heather McElhatton
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061133220

Chapter One

Laughter and fistfights. Lasagna thrown on the cafeteria floor, geometry books burning in the garbage cans, Sidra Stanislow finally losing her virginity up against the Dumpsters behind the memorial auditorium. All the janitors are getting high. The teachers' lounge is choked with stifled arguments and the vending machines are empty. It's the last day of high school.

You're graduating. Rushing headlong into the unknown rest of your life. Your friends are drifting off in every direction. Some are going to college, some are going to work, and some are going to their parents' basements to smoke pot and watch reality TV. As you see it, there are two options. Go to college and get ahead or take some time off and go traveling. If you get a degree, you might have a decent income—but if you go traveling, you might have an excellent adventure. Both have merits, both have drawbacks. Neither is permanent, and this makes the decision harder.

Take into account that your boyfriend has already decided to go to college and he wants you to come with him. (You've been together ever since he annihilated your virginity in an abandoned Christmas tree shack by the highway.) He's handsome and he loves you. The two of you have really great sex. He's big. (You know, big.) You see college as the responsible choice and travel as the fun choice, but then again college can be fun and traveling can be disastrous. The choice is yours. Your grandparents have given you a small chunk of money for graduation—just enough to get you going in whichever direction you choose.

If you decide to go to college, go to section #2 (page 4).

If you decide to travel, go to section #3 (page 5).

Continues...
Excerpted from Pretty Little Mistakesby Heather McElhatton Copyright © 2007 by Heather McElhatton. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000QTE9X4
Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks (October 13, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 13, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2275 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 516 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,359 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8,375 in Contemporary Literary Fiction
- #25,432 in Contemporary Romance Fiction
- #25,564 in Short Stories (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 175 ratings

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Heather McElhatton

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(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.

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4.3 out of 5

175 global ratings

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Anthony Trnka

My absolute favorite book of all time!

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2024

Verified Purchase

I have purchased this book many times over the years. It is one of my favorite things to gift my friends and read out loud with friends. It's an adult choose your own adventure book so you can go back and start over and choose different endings. Highly recommend.

Helpful

danny

I tried to still do good, improve the community with the money I got ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

So far, I have only read two paths, and I feel theer are some things to mention to other before they pick up and read the book.
This is a choose your own adventure novel, which means that you are the character. This is different from most reading, where you read about characters. Because of this, it is even more important in reading this book to get into character and suspend yoru disbelief of "that's not how it works" if you are to get out of the novel what the author intends:

"When you've reached the end of your journey, go back to the beginning and start over again, because everybody deserves a second chance- and everybody could always be somebody else."

From that, I think it is clear this book is about building empathy and learning that life is more complicated and difficult. And each path that you take in the book leaves you wondering and thinking about "your life".

The first path I took led me to being a saleswoman, and I chose to have morals, which cost me my job. This is where playing yoru character becomes important. Since I knew what having morals got me, I ended up deciding that I will do anythign for my daughter, even being a meth lord. I tried to still do good, improve the community with the money I got from the meth business, but when I died, I was left wondering if the means really did justify the ends. Did they? I helped people, but how many people did i get addicted, and what happened to them?

the second path I took led me to getting a doctorate, and since I was so determined, when it came to takign care of the clinic I was assigned to or myself, the choice was obvious. I couldn't give up take care of myself, and I ended up helping the entire community. Though I died quietly at night, and I think I did feel happy, that it was worthwhile to help others more than myself.

So far, I also like teh way she ends each path in the novel: it's nto always clear that you died or how you felt about your life in the end. On the first path, I was like, wait, there's no choices to make- oh, I really did die. I just died!

Updates:
So, I've read several more paths in the book, and I think it is quite enlightening. There are many tough choices that we get to make in reading the book, like staying with a man that you were once in love with as the passion dies down or fall in love with a new man that you can get into fun banters with, staying with someone you love or chasing your dream, beign with someone for the money or being with someone becuase of love, etc etc. These are actual choices that people have to make in their lives, and when you read the book and play the character, these choices are so much more difficult to make.

I do think this book isn't for everyone, because it does require a certain level of roleplaying, which can be uncomfortable, especially given some of the decisions you have to make in the book. But I enjoy this book, so, I'll leave it at that.

3 people found this helpful

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See Gee

Petal to the Metal: the perfect sumertime read

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2007

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Pretty Little Mistakes is the perfect summertime read... it's funny, charming, irreverent, seductive, touching, maddening, instructive, heart breaking and beautiful. Pretty Little Mistakes is like a 21st Century version of Pride and Prejudice, only you're in the driver's seat, steering the plot, speed shifting the themes, pulling perfect left turns on your destiny or yanking U-ies on your fate, (pink) petal to the metal, go, girl, go!

10 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Short stories

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2018

Verified Purchase

Too repetitive but fun once.

4 people found this helpful

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Qayla

Missing Print on cover

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

Wish it had the correct cover as picture in the purchase. This was my replacement for the original I had. Good condition besides that

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2009

Verified Purchase

This is one of the most enjoyable books I've discovered this year! Unique format and multiple endings...so far I've met my soul mate, died in prison, lived in poverty, married rich...and I am looking forward to many more lives! Can't wait for her next Do-Over book!

One person found this helpful

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Cara

This book was a great book. I wanted something different and that's exactly ...

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book was a great book. I wanted something different and that's exactly what this is. Tons of different outcomes.

One person found this helpful

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Amanda Wilson

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover!

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2008

Verified Purchase

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 so beautifully colorful: I didn't want to get rid of this book just because it looked pretty on my bookshelf.

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. 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 fully understand that I wasn't going to 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 anyone (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 the half of our species that doesn't have to suffer through this.

So, yeah, two stars.

17 people found this helpful

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