Thank you to Park Row for providing me with an e-ARC of Smile and Look Pretty in exchange for an honest review!

Who run the world?
Girls.

Smile & Look Pretty is a very timely book centering around workplace inequality, harassment & all of those other really non-fun things that women are forced to deal with at their 9-5. Definitely recommend it if you're looking for a book filled with GIRL POWER~!, friendships & taking the patriarchy down one anonymous blog post at a time.

My biggest problem with this book (& a problem I did get over by the end of it) is the number of characters & perspective-changing. But, once you adjust its smooth sailing from there!

Smile and Look Pretty by Amanda Pellegrino is a debut novel about four assistants who start a website in order to anonymously talk about how terrible their bosses are. They each work for a different powerful man in the entertainment industry, and they are tired of being underpaid and mistreated. Their website ends up going viral, and many other women start talking about their bosses too. This starts a very important conversation, and these four women are at the center of it. This book was very well-written and true-to-life, and I really enjoyed it. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

Well written clever enjoyed the characters women empowering women.This is perfect for my book club will make for interesting discussion.#netgalley #harlequinbooks

What's the worst thing your boss/ex-boss ever done to make you feel like crap? Or that was just totally outside your job description? I once had a lawyer ask me to cut his meat up for him - and that is NOT a euphemism. And that was just a small taste of how entitled he was - I lasted a whole 2 months at that job. You can't pay me enough to be treated like trash. I've gotten a manager fired for sexual harassment, have caught bosses staring at my ass or been handsy. I think probably most, if not every, woman has gone through something like this in their work life at some point... tragically.
SMILE AND LOOK PRETTY brings us four female assistants in their mid-twenties who work their ass off just to get looked over... over and over again. Reading their experiences, some were somewhat shocking but still I could see them happening. No assistant EVER should be put in a position where they can tally how many times they've seen their boss's penis. WHAT. They decide to put out a blog called Twentysomething that allows women who have been treated terribly in their positions to vent and talk about their issues anonymously. And, of course, this goes VIRAL.

As we have seen through the #metoo movement, and possibly through our own experiences, most of the time harassment of this kind can be washed over or there are little to no consequences. But what WOULD happen if so many people just said NO. Demanded the respect they deserved? NOT be scared at how easily replaceable they could be and how there are thousands, if not millions, of people readily available to take their place with a snap of the fingers. The manager I got "fired", I found out later, was just transferred to a different restaurant. Um, that doesn't really solve the problem, now does it?

In any case - this book gives us pure millennial anger and power. But let it be known that this doesn't just happen to the younger women... or to *just* women in general - men and them are also harassed or treated poorly on the daily. I loved this book as it just hit home, unfortunately, in too many ways. Was it a little too neat at the end? For me, yes but fuck it. I would 1000000% watch the adaptation to this and could see Zoe Kravitz, Jennifer Lawrence, Zendaya and Olivia Munn as the leads for some reason.

Loved the friendship between these four women. Remember y'all, there's not only powers in numbers, there's power in YOU.

Amanda Pellegrino's debut Smile and Look Pretty is the newest entry in what is essentially becoming its own subgenre - career stories of Millennial women in the #MeToo era. This book explores what happens when four female professionals decide to exploit their bosses' toxic behavior via an anonymous blog which encourages other women to come forward with their own harrowing stories of abuse and mistreatment. When the blog unexpectedly goes viral, the consequences are far-reaching and these four friends find themselves dealing with much more than they bargained for.

Smile and Look Pretty takes everything awful about working for an unsavory boss and combines it with fierce female friendship to create a novel that will inspire women everywhere to take notice and stand up for themselves. While not everyone will have dealt with leadership as toxic as the ones outlined in this story (although surely many of us have, unfortunately), most women can sympathize with feeling forced to suffer injustice for the sake of keeping a job. However, where Smile and Look Pretty takes a particularly lurid turn (that is in sharp contrast to the existence most women settle for) is in exposing these disastrous bosses for the scum they are. Smile and Look Pretty is a revenge fantasy novel for career-minded women everywhere that takes pushing back to the next level.

While Smile and Look Pretty has a strong and relatable premise, its execution is lacking. After skimming reviews, I wasn't surprised to learn that other readers had difficulty differentiating the four main characters and felt that the women did not vary greatly in voice or background. This is my main complaint with this novel - Pellegrino jumped from one character's POV to another without warning, and because the women were all written so similarly, I couldn't keep straight who was who and why I should care. A book that started off strongly lost appeal as I read due to lack of clarity and individuality among characters, hence my 3 star rating.

This felt like something I would like, but it didn't grab me. I ended up not finishing this title. I really think that others will enjoy it though.

I wanted to love this one, but I got about 20% in and knew I was going to lose interest. The premise is interesting, but one I started getting to know the women, I lost respect for them. I know it's probably controversial, but no career is worth being treated like they were being treated. I couldn't get behind the revenge plots. THis was a DNF for me

Love a good story that exposes inequities in the work place and Smile and Look Pretty does this in the best way. A feminist tale that I enjoyed every page of!

BOOK REVIEW: Smile and Look Pretty by Amanda Pellegrino
2022 Publication Date: March 8

⭐️⭐️⭐️️

CONNECT WITH THIS BOOK | T.I.M.E. SIMPLE LIVING TIP:
Know when to say enough is enough... ✨😎✨

T.I.M.E. BOOK REVIEW: A story centered on "standing up"... For yourself. For each other... Set in the worlds of television, journalism & the entertainment industry, we start reading expecting the female characters to need a "thick skin". But we quickly learn a suit of armor is even going to fall short... Has been described as "The 9 To 5 for the Instagram generation". But it also brings to mind so many other movies dating back from B&W classics to the many current streaming series devoted to this issue... And what I am always left with is: How many more decades will we endure before we all collectively say enough is enough?... ✨😎✨

Pages: 349
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Sub-Genre: Women's Friendship
Time Period: Present Day
Location: NYC

IF YOU LIKE THIS BOOK THEN TRY…
Book: The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki
TV: Good Girls Revolt (Amazon Prime)

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All my reviews can be seen at This Is My Everybody | Simple Living | Denise Wilbanks at www.thisismyeverybody.com

♡ Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

We are the assistants, the women behind the men and women who you know and love. We are unnamed, unknown, and uncared for. Best friends Cate, Lauren, Olivia and Max have each been assistants for years, each working in the field they yearn to succeed in, yet find themselves passed on for men. Their bosses, and those around them, take advantage of their positions of power, asking them to do unnecessary tasks like purchase cupcakes and make coffee that matches a paint chip. Even worse, some are subjected to unwanted sexual advances. When Cate finally feels like their weekly meeting isn't enough to get their grievances out she presents her friends with an anonymous blog she created, a place to share with the world how bosses take advantage of others. They become the Aggressive One, the Bossy One, the Bitchy One and the Emotional One. Soon others are submitting their stories to the page, the media grows interested, and the bosses names are revealed.

Smile and Look Pretty was such a smart, empowering read. Cate, Lauren, Olivia and Max are just chasing their dreams, letting slide the mistreatment in the hopes of finally being given a chance, but when they start to really look at what they've experienced they recognize that no man in their position is treated this way. The blog is initially just an outlet, but watching it grow in popularity and empower the four women is incredible. They each finally come out of their shell, admitting to who they really are, what their time as an assistant has done to them, and the morals they've let be trampled on. It's authentic and real, a book that reads like an expose, something you might see in The Times.

SMILE AND LOOK PRETTY

I immediately loved the bookish nuggets hidden throughout the storyline. And I’d like to say I’m tired of these feminist stories but I’m not.

This is a story of four assistants who decide to start a blog to vent and partly expose their very badly behaving bosses. Each assistant is unique although we kind of center around one.

I enjoyed the conversation and I consider this one of my revenge fantasies. So that was fun to explore with the author.

I recommend SMILE AND LOOK PRETTY to readers looking for a light revenge thriller with female protagonists and bookish subplots. My fave!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/ Park Row for this advanced copy!

I had high hopes for this book but this one missed the mark. I was excited about the life of assistants and coming together but this book didn't grabbed my attention.

Smile and Look Pretty is the story of four women who work as assistants to some questionable bosses. There's Lauren who wants to be a writer, and her boss Pete, and Cate who works for Matt who's always worried about being fired. Olivia who works for past-his-prime actor Nate and Max who works in TV and is Sheena's assistant. It was a bit hard to keep everyone straight at the start of the book because the individual voices were not that distinct from each other and I had to work some to keep everyone straight.

Things really get moving in this when the women create an anonymous blog site where they can vent about all the incredibly terrible things their bosses do or have them do. It was really quite chilling and I found myself identifying with a lot of the stories and wondering if the book needed some trigger warning. These bosses broke plenty of HR rules and their behavior is appalling. At some point I had to ask why they stayed.

When the website starts accepting stories from anonymous contributors and its popularity soars, the women need to decide whether to come clean with their identities. I really liked when the women started seeing that they had options and didn't need to put up with some of these behaviors just for the promise of upward mobility in their jobs. This story makes some very interesting and relevant points about women and their place in business today and the male-female power dynamics that are involved.

The start of this book was a bit slow, but it picks up nicely once the website gets going. There are some romantic elements involved that I found a nice addition to the story, and of course there some lies and surprises between the women that cause some conflict.

Overall, I enjoyed this story of the workplace and I think many women would relate to some of the stories these women tell of their bosses. While I thought there were some aspects of the website that were omitted (why didn't they monetize that site?) this story felt fresh and new and captured relevant moments in our recent history.

Ok girl power!! Love strong females standing up for themselves finally and this had that and more. This was empowering and clever for sure!

When I was offered the arc of Smile and Look Pretty, I decided to check out this debut novel. I like to check out new authors, because you never know what kind of gem you will find.

The blurb actually didn’t do the book justice, in my opinion. Amanda doesn’t write about underpaid and overworked assistants, but she tells the tale of women, who are harassed at work. Women, who silently accept being pinched in their butt by their boss or send on a wild goose hunt to find the perfect cupcakes for their bosses children’s birthday.

And when they start to share their stories, anonimously on a blog, they unchain a flood of reactions of women in similar situations.

The irony is that this is actually happening currently in Holland: an online documentary went viral about one of the biggest entertainment programs, where similar behaviour of male employees has been going on for years. And when a few courageous women spoke up, it started a floodgate of­ocomplaints. So, in my opinion, Amanda has made an outstanding debut. Recognizable, funny and courageous. Hopefully an inspiration for women around the globe to unite and speak up. Five out of five stars from me and a special thank you to Netgalley for providing the arc.

Smile and Look Pretty was published last week and I am obviously a week late! No surprise there! But the benefit of being late, the book still gets previewed and brought to peoples attention.

To be honest, I was hesitant with this book! When I read the summary it sounded to much like The Whisper Network, and I did not enjoy that book at all! I am so glad that I gave this book a chance!
You meet four women, who are best friends and assistants to powerful men. Dealing with discrimination, sexist comments, and feeling invalidated with their jobs they start an anonymous blog to vent. Their blog goes viral but will they be able to keep their anonymity?
I loved everything about this book! The characters were amazing! You could easily find something to like and hate about each woman. As a working woman, it was very easy for me to find an action where "yep, that has happened to me" moment!
I would highly recommend this book! Thank you to Netgalley, Parkrow, and Amanda Pellegrino for my gifted arc copy!

Cate, Olivia, Lauren, Max, are friends who have been emotionally supporting each other and get together once a week to vent about their jobs. All four of the women have been either been taken advantage of, sexually harassed or forced to do demeaning work. They have all been plugging away and tolerating the bad behaviour in their jobs with the hopes of moving up the career ladder in their position. At one of Thursday night vent sessions they decide to create a website called Twentysomething where they will start posting about the things that are happening to them as an opportunity for others to come forward and help bring about change.

The book felt very much about the me too movement where employers take advantage of employees who are starting their careers and are forced to work long hours and tolerate bad behaviour as previous employees have to move forward with their careers. I think this book would be a great movie. I do feel that there wasn't enough character development and I sometimes struggled with distinguishing the characters and was getting them mixed up from time to time.

The author had written the story originally in the first person perspective and I think I might have enjoyed that more because I may have been to connect more deeply with the characters.

So, I kind of feel like Smile and Look Pretty is a little bit misleading. I had expected more of a thriller than anything else, but that's not really what this story is.
There are aspects of this story that I really enjoyed though. I love how certain characters believe the other character that brought to light how their boss is sexually assaulting them in some way. There are way too many people who don't want to believe those who come out potentially years later after it happened. Those who don't believe are obviously people who have not been through this and are sometimes the reason why people wait so long. So, I love that aspect of this story. I think it's great that the story actually has girls supporting each other. There's way too much cattiness between women anymore so it's nice that it was the opposite in this book.
The only reason I didn't enjoy the story as much as I had hoped is that I went into the story thinking the story was going to be a thriller. I'm not even sure why I had thought that.

Something that stuck out to me in my reading experience was how human the characters were. Cate, Lauren, Olivia, and Max all make mistakes and ready or not, they face the consequences for them. At times with books mistakes are hidden under the rug, and I appreciated that this story didn’t do that. I also found that each girl’s perspective was well written and relatively easy to tell apart because while they are all good friends, they’re each their own person with their own outlook on how life is playing out for them.

Overall, this was quite an enjoyable read and I found it refreshing in how the author didn’t shy away from having the main friend group all facing their own obstacles and are able to work towards overcoming them.

There are a lot of titles that have come out as of late concerning a lot of recent and current events and this is definitely one of the stand outs on the fictional front for me. Tackling the #metoo movement and showing the lives and work experiences of the four leads - Cate, Lauren, Olivia and Max - was really well done for the most part. There were perhaps some moments of immaturity on their parts, but it gave some authenticity to their personalities in some ways. The book itself was well written and the last section of the book was definitely the best part. I enjoyed the author tackling such a current and relevant topic and writing a great story out of it.