This book was a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon, though, as many of the reviewers have mentioned, many of the scenarios are more negative than I would have liked. A fun choose your own adventure for adults, I'd recommend it to people who like fast paced, entertaining books, though there isn't a lot of substance to it for people who like meatier reads. I'll probably loan it to friends who used to read the kid versions of coose your own adventure back during their heyday in the nineties ( )

I'm not done with the Choose-your-own-adventure stories. This one is called a "Do-over novel".

This one is written from the perspective of a woman. I suppose it could be a gay man, but "you" bear children in some of the scenarios...so, maybe, someday? Miracle of science?

You start out on the day of High School Graduation. You get a healthy chunk of money from Grandpa - do you go directly to college, or do you travel? If you go to college, do you study art or science? If you travel, do you go to California or Europe? And so on, and so on. Each scenario only lasts about 5-6 jumps before you've settled in for life and eventually die.

It's fun, I guess. I got a bit depressed while reading it. Most of the lives sounded much better than the one I'm currently living, making me feel like my end-scenario would have been one of those that made the reader go quickly back to the beginning and try again. The back of the book states (as polar opposites): "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 [I got that ending once]; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park." Well, I don't like how obesity wound up in the same pole as "homeless by the river" and "being pecked to death by ducks"...but it's just a book, hmm?

I wonder if the author is particularly morbid in real life. The most interesting, poignant, beautiful, and disturbing sections of the stories seemed to revolve around "my" eventual death. "My" exits from the corporeal plane were varied (there is a God, there isn't a God, reincarnated as a human, reincarnated as a squid, etc.) and some were beautifully described. Once I wound up sailing away on a sea of pinks and reds. Once, I wound up meeting a bizarro St. Peter and being sent directly to the Skinning Room. Yeesh!

There seems to be a disproportionate number of endings in exotic locations (although some of them had "me" at Betty's Pies!), and a disproportionate number of death-by-car-accident. Also, "I" was quite...erm...promiscuous at the beginning of the book (not my choice, my character was written that way). Not that there's anything wrong with a healthy appetite, but screwing a mechanic for parts and labor...when I've GOT money in the bank...yeah.

Anyway! Reading this book at this particular point wasn't a great idea for me. I didn't need to see all of the paths that I could have taken (even though I know it's fiction...the world WAS that open at one point), and have my current path treated like something I'd better do-over. ( )

I took this book with me on a flight to Italy -- so, needless to say, I had plenty of time to "experience" the work. Unfortunately, as other reviewers have said, I wound up in situations that went from really bad to extremely awful to down-right terrible time and time again. I was intrigued by the premise -- and still am -- but wish that most of the plotlines weren't so depressing! Like another reader, I also gave up at one point and attempted to just read it through to the end. It was all right, but just not that interesting. ( )

Pretty Little Mistakes is exactly like those Choose Your Own Adventure Novels, only for adults! It's a lot of fun to read, and one life's story takes about 10 minutes to get through. I've been picking up this book off and on for about six months, and I am still not all the way through it. ( )

http://www.fnordinc.com/2008/06-21/ch... ( )

Unlike the other reviewer, I would go so far as to say buying this book was a "Pretty Little Mistake." This book is nothing but shallow and disappointing with very little adventure. ( )

I wouldn't go so far as to say that buying this book was, in itself, a "pretty little mistake", but I will admit that this is yet another lesson I've learned in not judging a book by its cover. I purchased Pretty Little Mistakes because it looked cool. I did read the premise, and thought an adult version of the choose your own adventure would make for a fun read. And it did, kind of. Maybe I'm just too much of a traditionalist to be able to truly enjoy a book that is written this way. You have to keep going back to the first page to start over on a new adventure, and although I knew the book was meant to be read this way, I though the stories were just too short for a book this big (500 pages). I did the CYOA thing about 10 times; each adventure only lasted about 12-20 pages each, and then you were dead and had to go back to the beginning all over again.

Eventually, I gave up and just read the book straight through. The various story lines ranged from interesting or fulfilling to scary or depressing. Obviously, the author wrote this book for women to read, because the main character (you) is a female. She meets all types of people, travels to different areas of the world (most of them outside the U.S., I noticed), and ends up in situations good, bad or terrible. If you read the book straight through, you'll find that near the end, you die on every other page. It's an interesting reading experience. ( )

I REALLY REALLY wanted to like this book more than I did. I love the idea of a chose-your-own story for adults. I found the author made too many choices for you. And the story lines were pretty annoying. *sigh* ( )

An interesting premise--being given a decision to make at the end of each short section, thus changing the story depending on what path you choose to take. I used to love books like this when I was a kid. The problem was that the writing was overly simple (though to a certain extent I can see how it would have to be to make the premise work), I really wasn't engaged by it, and the choices seemed rather judgemental (if you make what the author deems a morally questionable choice, you're sure to meet a bad end). It was an okay way to pass a slow afternoon, but I wouldn't have read it if I'd had anything else around. ( )

This book works best as an aid for nostalgia. It's a quick experience - it takes less than twenty minutes to get from the first page to the end of a story line - but it's fun. The stories are absurd and while not particularly well-written, they're not dreadful either. However, if you liked the choose your own adventure books when you were a kid, this is a fun way to bring that experience into adulthood. ( )

Pretty Little Mistakes is unique in the premise of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book for adults. However, I found that many of the endings were too extreme and/or unbelievable to keep my interest. Also, too little thought is invested in plot and character development to make the various endings worthwhile. The choices are also limited - often when I wanted to make a choice, I couldn't; other times there were not enough options to choose from.

However, the concept is very good. Allowing the reader to interact with the text by providing a variety of endings is intriguing. I would like to see another book like this with more of a potpourri of bland and spicy endings based on the reader's choices, rather than pure sensationalism. ( )

http://anotherlibrarian.blogspot.com/... ( )

7.07 ( )