What Pretty Gets You

Book excerpt: 19-year-old Maia works a kiosk at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting to be discovered and watching people's lives take off while hers stays stagnant. When a handsome commuter charms her with stories of the perfect life in the snow-capped mountains of Colorado, she rashly follows him into a future she was not expecting. Desperate to regain control of her life and sentenced to bedrest in her second pregnancy, Carolyn makes the dangerous decision to hire the young woman she suspects is sleeping with her husband to be their nanny. Friends close; beautiful enemies closer, she reasons. Carolyn and Maia harbor secret pasts. What unfolds in Boulder over the summer exposes the gritty underbelly of their dreams and forces both women to question the bounds of loyalty, the complicated nature of female friendship, and the privilege and peril of physical beauty.