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WE COULD BE BEAUTIFUL

Swan Huntley

A nuanced, suspenseful debut novel in the tradition of Donna Tartt and Gillian Flynn.

Catherine West is wealthy and beautiful. She collects art, she works out with a personal trainer, she owns an immaculate West Village brownstone. She also tries hard to be a good person. And yet, despite all this, Catherine feels, and has always felt, deeply incomplete. Catherine suspects that once she gets the one thing she has always wanted and doesn’t have yet—a family—she will be happy. When she meets William Stockton, a charismatic banker who’s also interested in art, she’s sure she has found in him a way to complete herself. It turns out William and Catherine’s parents were even friends years ago—William tells Catherine he remembers visiting her house as a child. As their wedding date approaches, Catherine begins to feel suspicious of William, especially when her mother (now suffering from Alzheimer’s) seems to have only bad memories of William as a boy. In her mother’s old diary, Catherine finds clues eluding to a mystery, and a letter from a former nanny, which says, “I will never forgive myself for not being there when you needed me most. We cannot trust anyone. That’s what I have learned.” When Catherine tracks down her former nanny, she is forced to confront the truth about the man she loves, and must decide how much of this truth she is willing to hide (from herself and others) in order to keep up appearances. Swan Huntley holds a BA from Eckerd College and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and The Ragdale Foundation. Her fiction has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Two Cities Review. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Book Published 2016-06-28 by Doubleday

Comments

This psychological thriller will keep you up all night turning pages.

As elegantly plotted as it is—and it is—Huntley's debut stands out not for its thrills but rather for her hawkish eye for social detail and razor-sharp wit. It is more than a classic psychological thriller: it is also a haunting—and weirdly moving—portrait of love and family among Manhattan's flailing upper crust. An intoxicating escape; as smart as it is fun. Read more...

Catherine West is the woman we all love to hate: Beautiful, rich, and self-absorbed. When William Stockton appears to make her his bride, Catherine does her best to keep his shady past at bay, but it catches up with them in the end.

Full of secrets and a quickly moving plot, We Could Be Beautiful is the perfect addition to your reading list, and the perfect book for fans of The Girl on the Train.

Love, money, and secrets collide in this intoxicating debut novel… Will make your head swirl.

Sharp, hilarious and thrillingly unsettling. This well-crafted page-turner about a woman trapped in a gilded cage of her own creation is a sheer pleasure to read; it's also complex and multilayered, much like the characters that inhabit it.

A terrifically smart, funny, tender debut from the absurdly talented Swan Huntley. With astonishing acuity and compassion, she locates all the foibles and frailties and unexpected moments of courage that make us human. Beautiful, indeed.

Swan Huntley intimately explores the psyche of a 43-year-old, still single, affluent New Yorker in her first novel, We Could Be Beautiful…Aspects of deception and greed are suspenseful undercurrents that propel this well-plotted, seductive psychological thriller. Huntley has created a riveting yet flawed heroine in whom readers will eagerly invest as she is forced to unravel the truth about a man who seems too good to be true and a shrouded past that may hold the key to her future.

"We Could be Beautiful is a hilarious look at the wealth and excess of Upper East Side families and the secrets they keep. Part satire, part page-turner mystery, it skewers first, then reveals a yearning heart pounding at its core.

Sleek debut…This is slow-burn suspense—more of a character study than a thriller—but Huntley has expertly created her characters and ekes out just enough tension throughout, leading readers on a compelling trip to the unexpected conclusion.

Here's a thriller we can sink into. Deeply psychological and nuanced…Huntley's novel is a twisting, turning, secret-filled story that's worthy of your precious summer reading time. Read more...

We Could Be Beautiful is a sexy psychological thriller about wealth and class and the endless mysteries of romantic engagement. At the heart of Swan Huntley’s sly and witty debut is the unsettling question that anyone who’s ever been in love has wondered about the person they've given their heart to: Who are you?