Everyone Is Beautiful: A Novel

Leaving her family, her friends, and her home behind to follow her husband across the country with her three small boys while he attends graduate school, Lanie begins to believe that something is missing from her life and launches a campaign to find herself--without destroying everything else in the process. 35,000 first printing.
“What a clear-eyed rendering of the grimy, exhausting, beautiful mess that is early motherhood! I laughed, winced in recognition, and cheered wholeheartedly (sometimes out loud) for Lanie as she struggles to learn how to love everyone enough and still give part of herself to herself.”—Marisa de los Santos, author of Belong to MeLanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in the Northeast. She’s left behind family, friends, and a comfortable life—all so her husband can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But somewhere in the eye of her personal hurricane, it hits Lanie that she once had dreams too. If only she could remember what they were. These days, Lanie always seems to rank herself dead last—and when another mom accidentally criticizes her appearance, it’s the final straw. Fifteen years, three babies, and more pounds than she’s willing to count since the day she said “I do,” Lanie longs desperately to feel like her old self again. It’s time to rise up, fish her moxie out of the diaper pail, and find the woman she was before motherhood capsized her entire existence. Lanie sets change in motion—joining a gym, signing up for photography classes, and finding a new best friend. But she also creates waves that come to threaten her whole life. In the end, Lanie must figure out once and for all how to find herself without losing everything else in the process. Katherine Center’s Everyone Is Beautiful is a hugely entertaining, poignant, and charming new novel about what happens after happily ever after: how a woman learns to fall in love with her husband—and her entire life—all over again.Praise for Everyone Is Beautiful“If you like novels with happy endings that will remind you of childhood fairy tales, then Katherine Center’sEveryone is Beautiful is the perfect book . . . Bound to catch the sympathetic attention of women looking for stories of self-improvement on physical and emotional levels. This is a breezy read that glows, in part, because its characters bask in the sunny side of life.”—USA Today“Endearing . . . Unpretentious, silly, and honest.”—People“Everyone is Beautiful will make you laugh out loud, even as you wince in recognition.”—Free Lance Star