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The Other Beautiful People
In the entertainment world, the spotlight shines on the beautiful— but behind the scenes are those who make the magic happen. Amy Greene is one of them. As head of marketing and public relations at the Cinema Channel, a beloved yet struggling cable network devoted to classic and independent films based in midtown Manhattan, Amy is at the height of her career— but her life is anything but steadfast. Torn between her charismatic boss, Owen Orski, and her husband Jack, Amy' s world schisms with 9/11, the death of her father, and the secrets she' s kept locked away. The Other Beautiful People is a dazzling cinematic novel about love, loss, and the search for meaning— in work, family, and the spaces in between. It' s a story that will captivate your heart and stay with you long after the final scene. The Other Beautiful People is a workplace love story unlike any other.
- GenresFictionContemporary
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 2, 2026
About the author
Caroline Bock
15 books114 followersCaroline Bock writes micros to novels. Her latest novel, and her first for adults, The Other Beautiful People, is a workplace love story about a movie-loving marketing executive (Regal House Publishing, 2026). Her short story collection, Carry Her Home, won the Fiction Award from the Washington Writers' Publishing House. She is also the author of acclaimed young adult novels LIE and Before My Eyes from St. Martin’s Press. Her short work is featured in the Best of Microfiction 2026 and has been widely published in literary magazines and anthologies.
Caroline Bock is also the co-president and prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Prior to focusing on her writing/editing, she was a marketing and public relations executive in the cable industry for two decades, most notably at Bravo, IFC, IFC Films, and AMC. In fact, she was part of the executive team that launched The Independent Film Channel (IFC) and IFC Films.
She is a graduate of Syracuse University where she studied creative writing with Raymond Carver, Tess Gallagher, Jack Gilbert and Tobias Wolff. She earned an MFA in Fiction from the City College of New York, and often leads writing workshops at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. She lives with her husband in Potomac, Maryland.
Caroline Bock is also the co-president and prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Prior to focusing on her writing/editing, she was a marketing and public relations executive in the cable industry for two decades, most notably at Bravo, IFC, IFC Films, and AMC. In fact, she was part of the executive team that launched The Independent Film Channel (IFC) and IFC Films.
She is a graduate of Syracuse University where she studied creative writing with Raymond Carver, Tess Gallagher, Jack Gilbert and Tobias Wolff. She earned an MFA in Fiction from the City College of New York, and often leads writing workshops at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. She lives with her husband in Potomac, Maryland.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 6, 2026
I was hooked on this book, picking it up again and again when I should have been doing other things (like, say, going to bed and getting some sleep!). The voice is urgent and propulsive, and the tension between the steadiness of the MC's husband and the passion she feels for her career (and two of the men involved in it) is a complex knot that she perhaps would rather stay raveled up in than untie. How do you balance multiple great loves when you can't sustain them all? This is a love letter to New York and to the movies, and to passion (for people, family, the lore of show biz) itself. This was one of those books you're sad about finishing because you want to stay suspended in that world. A propulsive and engrossing read.
June 22, 2026
Caroline Bock's The Other Beautiful People is a beautiful book, though not all the characters act so beautifully, which makes for such a good read. The group portrait of the protagonist Amy and her Cinema Station marketing and PR job and her husband Jack, in that order of importance, is dynamic in a way that (sorry for the chauvinism) only a NYC novel can be. A lot of snappy dialogue, natch, and even (plot spoiler? nah) a short disquisition on a liverwurst sandwich. Set in the job-scape of a post-9/11 cityscape, this novel is recommended to anyone out for a lively story.
June 22, 2026
The highly stressed atmosphere typical of New York City is spot on in this story. Amy, the main character, struggles with her husband's recent heart attack, skeletons in her past, and newly introduced uncertainty with her job of more than 20 years. As someone who lived in New York City for a year and a half (2000-2001), I felt like I was there again with the author's descriptions of the settings, sounds, smells, and feelings of the internal and external tension. It was the same with Washington, DC, where I've also traveled a lot. Caroline is a masterful storyteller.
June 20, 2026
This book is warm, funny, and heart-wrenching. I worked in the cable TV industry during the years covered in the story, but you don’t need that background to enjoy the book. It deals with universal themes of love and grief and the tension between your work family and your family family. It’s also filled with fun film and literary references. Highly recommend!
September 20, 2026
This book brings us back to 9/11 and the after effects of a couple trying to figure out how to carry on. Amy, has a career in cable world in NYC that she’s passionate about, while her husband had to get out of NYC. With their move to Maryland Amy hopes that she can split her time between a relative who becomes sick in MD and her career in NYC. Her stress brings on the voice of her late father, who tries to give her the basic common sense coaching. Between office politics and post work meet ups at the local bar, she struggles to keep her job, sanity and the happiness of her boss. It all plays out in this cute novel.
August 30, 2026
Caroline's "The Other Beautiful People" is a wonderful tale of love, sorrow, change and the importance of family. Her characters come alive as the story unfolds. We know her struggle in trying to achieve a work/life balance while juggling the highs and lows of family life.
July 4, 2026
Main character Amy Greene has a stressful life. Following the 9/11 attacks, the cable media company where she works in NYC is acquired, raising all kinds of uncertainties for the long-established work family she loves. She’s recently left NYC to live in the D.C. suburbs with her husband, Jack, who has health issues, but is still trying to commute to New York and find her way through the changed landscape of her work life.
Her love for NYC and her work life there are at constant odds with her allegiance to her husband and the obligation she feels toward him. Their marriage seems to be at a crossroads, and the reader wonders what will happen—Will she stick it out with him or fall into the arms of Andy, a NYC reporter who seems intent on pursuing her.
Throughout, she has an ongoing dialogue of sorts with the ghost of her father—a relationship that reveals how unsettled her life has become and how torn she is about how to move forward.
Also throughout is a running thread related to Amy’s love of old movies. Each new person she meets, she categorizes immediately by which old movie star they resemble.
But life isn’t a movie—and circumstances come to a head, forcing Amy to make some hard choices about her life.
This is an intense and enjoyable story inside the mind of a woman pulled in too many directions—a roller coaster ride all too many women have found themselves on. Many readers will see themselves in Amy’s journey.
Her love for NYC and her work life there are at constant odds with her allegiance to her husband and the obligation she feels toward him. Their marriage seems to be at a crossroads, and the reader wonders what will happen—Will she stick it out with him or fall into the arms of Andy, a NYC reporter who seems intent on pursuing her.
Throughout, she has an ongoing dialogue of sorts with the ghost of her father—a relationship that reveals how unsettled her life has become and how torn she is about how to move forward.
Also throughout is a running thread related to Amy’s love of old movies. Each new person she meets, she categorizes immediately by which old movie star they resemble.
But life isn’t a movie—and circumstances come to a head, forcing Amy to make some hard choices about her life.
This is an intense and enjoyable story inside the mind of a woman pulled in too many directions—a roller coaster ride all too many women have found themselves on. Many readers will see themselves in Amy’s journey.
September 11, 2026
With humor and love, this compelling story explores the sacrifices required to build careers and families. I appreciated the insider’s view of the developing cable industry in the early aughts and enjoyed reading about the narrator Amy Greene’s affection for films and her exhilarating and unbeatable competence as a high-powered executive with the Cinema Channel.
Set in the aftermath of destruction of the World Trade Towers, The Other Beautiful People looks with pain and wisdom on losses in our lives and how we cope. The book offers added timeliness during this year marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
Set in the aftermath of destruction of the World Trade Towers, The Other Beautiful People looks with pain and wisdom on losses in our lives and how we cope. The book offers added timeliness during this year marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
June 19, 2026
Caroline Bock gives us a memorable story–evoking the uncertainty of the weeks following 9/11, while also remaining timeless. Even more striking than the authentic dialogue between The Other Beautiful People’s cast of characters is the internal monologue of the story’s protagonist, Amy Greene, which at times had me catching my breath. The writing is honest and raw and fearless. I found myself fully immersed in every scene—looking anxiously alongside Amy at a clock in the ER and at a metaphoric aquarium in her boss’s office. This novel is filled with so many resonant sentences. Some are like song lyrics, repeating a word or emotion for emphasis. Some are simple and perfect, such as: “The words disappear between us.” I expect you will find many favorites of your own. For me, the last sentence put a tear in my eye.
June 12, 2026
Caroline Bock’s first novel for adults is rich, layered, intellectually complex, and, yes, beautiful. Equal parts domestic fiction and workplace drama, the novel centers on Amy Greene, a television executive, wife, mother, and film aficionado whose life is combusting. She finds herself overwhelmed and pulled in too many directions, by too many people all vying for her attention and loyalty, as she tries to figure out what she wants from her own life. Perhaps for the first time.
Read my full review in the online magazine I co-run:
https://www.washington-unbound.com/bo...
Read my full review in the online magazine I co-run:
https://www.washington-unbound.com/bo...
June 20, 2026
It’s about “The other beautiful people” that kept me longing and wanting more chapter after chapter! Very touching and worth reading!!!
Review of advance copy received from Author
At the turn of the millennium in New York City, Amy Greene has it all. The love and support of her long-time husband. A work husband who respects her as a person and champions her ideas. The loyalty of dozens of colleagues who’ve fostered friendships over weekly happy hours at an Irish dive bar near the Cinema Channel’s Manhattan offices.
Perks for the driven cable television executive include jet-setting to Hollywood, Cannes and the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah, and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.
But a series of back-to-back family, job-related and national crises threatens Amy’s carefully honed balance and forces her to question what she really wants.
Over the course of one fast-paced week set two months after the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Amy wants many things; some things she notes on her Sunday night to-do list, and others she admits only in her running internal monologue (as witnessed by a friendly ghost): Another kiss. An elusive slice of authentic New York pizza hot out of the oven. One more word from her long-dead mother.
As the story opens in The Other Beautiful People, Amy wants to go home.
She’s dressed in an oversized, twenty-year-old Cinema Channel T-shirt and sits alone on a porch swing at a rental house in a suburb outside Washington, DC, after her husband uprooted the couple and sublet their railroad-style apartment back in New York.
Before they’ve had a chance to finish unpacking, Amy must rush her husband to the emergency room, where the doctors do little more to address his chest pains than order him to find a local primary care physician.
In the span of a week, Amy bounces between caretaking for her real husband, Jack, and catering to the whims of her work husband, Owen, who demands her presence in the midtown Manhattan office but is less than forthcoming about plans to sell the beloved Cinema Channel to a larger media company.
Amy finds herself torn between trying to keep her work family whole (there are rumors of pending layoffs) and holding her nuclear family together (did I mention the smoldering chemistry between Amy and a certain television trade reporter who may or may not resemble an old-time Hollywood movie star?).
The Other Beautiful People is a love letter to family, colleagues, work crushes, first responders and the city of New York. It’s also about the perpetual search for love and the heartache that comes with saying goodbye to something, or someone, truly cherished.
What does Amy want? She wants to know what love is. She wants a new start. She wants a forever home. She wants more.
Read this novel by Caroline Bock. She’ll leave you wanting more, too.
Perks for the driven cable television executive include jet-setting to Hollywood, Cannes and the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah, and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.
But a series of back-to-back family, job-related and national crises threatens Amy’s carefully honed balance and forces her to question what she really wants.
Over the course of one fast-paced week set two months after the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Amy wants many things; some things she notes on her Sunday night to-do list, and others she admits only in her running internal monologue (as witnessed by a friendly ghost): Another kiss. An elusive slice of authentic New York pizza hot out of the oven. One more word from her long-dead mother.
As the story opens in The Other Beautiful People, Amy wants to go home.
She’s dressed in an oversized, twenty-year-old Cinema Channel T-shirt and sits alone on a porch swing at a rental house in a suburb outside Washington, DC, after her husband uprooted the couple and sublet their railroad-style apartment back in New York.
Before they’ve had a chance to finish unpacking, Amy must rush her husband to the emergency room, where the doctors do little more to address his chest pains than order him to find a local primary care physician.
In the span of a week, Amy bounces between caretaking for her real husband, Jack, and catering to the whims of her work husband, Owen, who demands her presence in the midtown Manhattan office but is less than forthcoming about plans to sell the beloved Cinema Channel to a larger media company.
Amy finds herself torn between trying to keep her work family whole (there are rumors of pending layoffs) and holding her nuclear family together (did I mention the smoldering chemistry between Amy and a certain television trade reporter who may or may not resemble an old-time Hollywood movie star?).
The Other Beautiful People is a love letter to family, colleagues, work crushes, first responders and the city of New York. It’s also about the perpetual search for love and the heartache that comes with saying goodbye to something, or someone, truly cherished.
What does Amy want? She wants to know what love is. She wants a new start. She wants a forever home. She wants more.
Read this novel by Caroline Bock. She’ll leave you wanting more, too.
August 28, 2026
The rhythms and verve of 1990s New York City pulsate through Caroline Bock’s gorgeous new novel, The Other Beautiful People (Regal House Publishing, 2026), in ways that will thrill New Yorkers past and present. A native New Yorker herself, Bock’s love for the city echoes throughout. Indeed, the musicality of Bock’s novel rocks the reader like the clickety clack of the Amtrak train from Grand Central Station to DC’s Union Station that protagonist Amy Greene rides to weave together her professional life as a cable television executive in the city with her newly relocated home in Silver Spring with husband Jack.
Heroine Amy is the senior marketing executive with a cable television channel devoted to classic films—the Cinema Channel. She and her colleague, CEO Owen Orski, share a passion for film classics that rivals the other sensual passions lacing throughout the narrative. Cinephile readers will delight in the book’s lush filmic imagery, including an exhilaratingly cinematic kiss.
In what is also, hands-down, the best scene I've ever read of a Friday night happy hour with co-workers in a New York dive bar, The Other Beautiful People treats the reader to a cascade of characters who weave in and out of their inner lives with equal parts seduction, strategy, and fantasy.
Bock describes The Other Beautiful People as unabashedly autobiographical, and the heartbreaking backstory of Amy bespeaks the author’s own life narrative. Amy is the elder of two children whose mother was incapacitated by a massive cerebral hemorrhage when Amy, like Bock herself, was only four years old. With his wife permanently institutionalized, Amy’s single dad raised his children alone, with 9-year-old Amy—aka “Toots”—assuming parent-like responsibilities for her younger brother and the household.
Set a year after her father’s death, Amy still mourns him with a visceral rawness that perfectly captures the physical anguish of grief. As City College Professor Linsey Abrams has said, in Amy, Caroline Bock has given us a female Hamlet haunted by the visitations and exhortations of her late father.
The Other Beautiful People is a beautiful book, beautifully written, an homage to the uncelebrated working people who hold our world together, to the film and television industries, to New York, to family, and the healing power of sorrow and community.
Heroine Amy is the senior marketing executive with a cable television channel devoted to classic films—the Cinema Channel. She and her colleague, CEO Owen Orski, share a passion for film classics that rivals the other sensual passions lacing throughout the narrative. Cinephile readers will delight in the book’s lush filmic imagery, including an exhilaratingly cinematic kiss.
In what is also, hands-down, the best scene I've ever read of a Friday night happy hour with co-workers in a New York dive bar, The Other Beautiful People treats the reader to a cascade of characters who weave in and out of their inner lives with equal parts seduction, strategy, and fantasy.
Bock describes The Other Beautiful People as unabashedly autobiographical, and the heartbreaking backstory of Amy bespeaks the author’s own life narrative. Amy is the elder of two children whose mother was incapacitated by a massive cerebral hemorrhage when Amy, like Bock herself, was only four years old. With his wife permanently institutionalized, Amy’s single dad raised his children alone, with 9-year-old Amy—aka “Toots”—assuming parent-like responsibilities for her younger brother and the household.
Set a year after her father’s death, Amy still mourns him with a visceral rawness that perfectly captures the physical anguish of grief. As City College Professor Linsey Abrams has said, in Amy, Caroline Bock has given us a female Hamlet haunted by the visitations and exhortations of her late father.
The Other Beautiful People is a beautiful book, beautifully written, an homage to the uncelebrated working people who hold our world together, to the film and television industries, to New York, to family, and the healing power of sorrow and community.
July 17, 2026
With her permission, I am sharing a review of THE OTHER BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE from one of the most fabulous, thoughtful people I know... Linsey Abrams, retired professor, the former head of the MFA department at the City College of New York, my former thesis advisor, my mentor...
It’s a beautiful novel. So full, the way life is. The present story and all the different pasts swirl like a galaxy, an organizing principle of an otherwise diffuse mass. The self.
It is tough and sweet, funny and profound, wrenching, alarming, thrilling, and always on the verge of something more complicated or simple. The films are a revelation.
Parents propel our destinies (they’re the one thing we can’t recover from, and the one thing that, conversely, makes us truly us—this is such a feelingful story). And then the struggle to accept a “home” (most people try to find it) becomes more and more central until everything converges to land her exactly there. My favorite character is Jack.
This is, of course, a woman’s Hamlet. Ghost, being haunted, brainy, language obsessed, mother father, her inability to live with things as they are. The horrible imperfection and then devolution. Who can live with what happens?
Women readers recognize themselves in Amy. What a multifaceted internal life—it rings true. It rings. And she is particularly herself…at the same time a bit like the narrated others. What she sees in them is hers. She’s like the firemen too. Unlike Hamlet, her eroticism runs all the way through it. This also rings.
You should be exhilarated, which I suspect you are.
Love, Linsey
------------------
With so much gratitude
It’s a beautiful novel. So full, the way life is. The present story and all the different pasts swirl like a galaxy, an organizing principle of an otherwise diffuse mass. The self.
It is tough and sweet, funny and profound, wrenching, alarming, thrilling, and always on the verge of something more complicated or simple. The films are a revelation.
Parents propel our destinies (they’re the one thing we can’t recover from, and the one thing that, conversely, makes us truly us—this is such a feelingful story). And then the struggle to accept a “home” (most people try to find it) becomes more and more central until everything converges to land her exactly there. My favorite character is Jack.
This is, of course, a woman’s Hamlet. Ghost, being haunted, brainy, language obsessed, mother father, her inability to live with things as they are. The horrible imperfection and then devolution. Who can live with what happens?
Women readers recognize themselves in Amy. What a multifaceted internal life—it rings true. It rings. And she is particularly herself…at the same time a bit like the narrated others. What she sees in them is hers. She’s like the firemen too. Unlike Hamlet, her eroticism runs all the way through it. This also rings.
You should be exhilarated, which I suspect you are.
Love, Linsey
------------------
With so much gratitude
June 23, 2026
When Ms. Bock reached out to see if I would be interested in reading her book, I said sure! And entered blindly.
I wasn't sure where this tale would take me but now that I have reached the end of the journey, I can say it was a vivid, emotional ride full of speed bumps and detours. While that sounds crazy, rest assured, this is meant in the best of ways.
The ease in which the author paints NYC, made me feel as if I was transplanted back to one of my many visits to this hustling bustling place. The grittiness she portrayed of post 9/11 made me think this was going to be a story redone, but it was so much more. That was merely a pivot point of one of the many threads that pull at our protagonist. Devoted mother, daughter, sister, wife, and executive. We are shown the many complexities of family as well as those that we spend most of our time with: those we work with.
This story peels back the layers of what women go through in their attempt to be everything to everyone. Often failing, but continuing on the journey to be our authentic self.
A huge thank you to Caroline Bock for this copy of an amazing story!
I wasn't sure where this tale would take me but now that I have reached the end of the journey, I can say it was a vivid, emotional ride full of speed bumps and detours. While that sounds crazy, rest assured, this is meant in the best of ways.
The ease in which the author paints NYC, made me feel as if I was transplanted back to one of my many visits to this hustling bustling place. The grittiness she portrayed of post 9/11 made me think this was going to be a story redone, but it was so much more. That was merely a pivot point of one of the many threads that pull at our protagonist. Devoted mother, daughter, sister, wife, and executive. We are shown the many complexities of family as well as those that we spend most of our time with: those we work with.
This story peels back the layers of what women go through in their attempt to be everything to everyone. Often failing, but continuing on the journey to be our authentic self.
A huge thank you to Caroline Bock for this copy of an amazing story!
July 31, 2026
Caroline Bock knows the world she portrays in The Other Beautiful People. This seems clear from her honest and intimate portrayal of the world of a cable movie network executive and the people who inhabit her world. There are, of course, the beautiful people on the screen—elusive, inticing and charismatic and there are the other, very real, beautiful people who make make up the real world of the protagonist in this heart-felt human drama, full of emotion, deep feeling, humor and humanity.
Amy faces the decisions we all face in life, what to do, who to love, what to be. And there is also the poignancy of facing these life decisions in a post 9/11 world that showed everyone the fragility of life itself. Amy is also haunted a bit by her past (aren't we all? ), a dead father who literally "haunts" her as that parental voice that lives on in your head, and a missing mother who was mentally ill and whose absence meant that some part childhood growth would always be missing. The marriage, family and business relationships all ring true, and Bock writes with a kindness and understanding of her characters that makes this book a special journey.
Amy faces the decisions we all face in life, what to do, who to love, what to be. And there is also the poignancy of facing these life decisions in a post 9/11 world that showed everyone the fragility of life itself. Amy is also haunted a bit by her past (aren't we all? ), a dead father who literally "haunts" her as that parental voice that lives on in your head, and a missing mother who was mentally ill and whose absence meant that some part childhood growth would always be missing. The marriage, family and business relationships all ring true, and Bock writes with a kindness and understanding of her characters that makes this book a special journey.
August 23, 2026
This beautifully written book is less a novel than an action-packed marathon race through a few crucial and sleepless days in the life of the protagonist, a female cable channel executive who has risen to her high position through relentless energy and love for her work and her people. With the ruins of the Twin Towers still smoking after 9/11, the novel's undaunted heroine, Amy Greene, is faced with agonizing choices and uncertainty about where her career is going and where to live, about her doggedly faithful husband's health and their relationship, and the competing constant tug of a job to which she is passionately devoted, and more than one attractive male colleague. With everything in so much flux, the last thing she needs is to keep running into a ghost during her train rides between her new life in Washington and her old life in New York. But ghosts aren't known for caring about the convenience of their visitations ... An inspiring and excellent read to inhabit the mind and soul of a big-hearted, successful woman, who could well be read as a feminist icon with her complexity and strength of character.
October 8, 2026
The Other Beautiful People can be an insider’s book for a movie/tv lover: not the gossip from the gossip pages, but an intimate look at the people in the offices where the movie magic unglamorously gets disseminated. Amy Greene, the cable executive protagonist, is a movie lover (old movies especially) whose passion for cinema becomes both her refuge and her vulnerability. Told in movie-like scenes during the emotionally fraught times right after the 9/11 attacks, Amy follows her husband’s job from NYC to Silver Spring, Md, thinking that she can just easily zip back and forth between her worlds, only to find that her loves pull from all directions and she realizes that she might have to make choices, that only in Hollywood movies can one have it all.
But beyond the cinematic and workplace, the story touches on the real-life complexities of marriage, careers, grief, nostalgia, not offering any easy answers or neat plots, but carrying the emotional resonance to make us feel and relate. It's those elements that render it a lovely contemplation on living and choosing paths and loving so many people along the way.
But beyond the cinematic and workplace, the story touches on the real-life complexities of marriage, careers, grief, nostalgia, not offering any easy answers or neat plots, but carrying the emotional resonance to make us feel and relate. It's those elements that render it a lovely contemplation on living and choosing paths and loving so many people along the way.
June 4, 2026
Caroline draws you in from the first page. Bringing you back to the dark days of NYC Sept. 11, 2001 and the decisions the protagonist Amy Green faces in the weeks following. Torn between the love of work and family, two cities, and three men, all who pull at different strings of her heart and soul- beautifully strung together with her homage (yet another form of love) to the movie classics. It may surprise you as you laugh and cry and maybe find yourself thinking about the choices you‘ve made. Highly recommend. Caroline draws you in from the first page. Bringing you back to the dark days of NYC Sept. 11, 2001 and the decisions the protagonist Amy Greene faces in the weeks following. Torn between the love of work and family, two cities, and three men, all who pull at different strings of her heart and soul- beautifully strung together with her homage (yet another form of love) to the movie classics. It may surprise you as you laugh and cry and maybe find yourself thinking about the choices you‘ve made. Highly recommend.
August 18, 2026
*The Other Beautiful People* is a masterclass in the art of the modern novel by author Caroline Bock. Set against 9/11 and its aftermath, the reader is soon ensconced in the frenetic existence of protagonist Amy Greene. A marketing maven, she nurtures a ‘film-classics’ cable company to its own kind of stardom. All while navigating the roles of wife, mother, and daughter. And perhaps … a romantic relationship with a work-colleague, or two. I rate its final sentences alongside those of Virginia Woolf’s *To The Lighthouse*.
Read *The Other Beautiful People* for its engaging yet poignant storyline.
Buy it for its phenomenal ending.
Read *The Other Beautiful People* for its engaging yet poignant storyline.
Buy it for its phenomenal ending.
Review of advance copy received from Author
In The Other Beautiful People, Caroline Bock transported me to Amy Greene’s hectic world as a high-powered marketing and public relations executive at a film cable network. The story takes place in New York City post 9/11 where Amy has to juggle monumental challenges both at work and at home. How does she do it? How does she deal with the ever-changing world of cable television? How did the devastation of 9/11 affect Amy and her family? What secrets do we learn about Amy along the way?
The Other Beautiful People is a page-turner I couldn’t put down. Bravo Caroline Bock. Bravo Amy Greene.
The Other Beautiful People is a page-turner I couldn’t put down. Bravo Caroline Bock. Bravo Amy Greene.
June 2, 2026
In the interest of full disclosure, I am totally biased since I have been married to the author for over 40 years, but I have read this book at least 10 times and it gets better and better every time. The Other Beautiful People is the kind of book you just cannot put down. It brings the corporate culture of a cable television network in the aftermath of 9/11 to life through its main character, whose struggles managing a high powered job and a complicated personal life lead to deeply intense conversations with her parents' spirits. It is all deeply moving. A book you will remember!
July 2, 2026
Immersive. Propulsive. Lyrical. Moving. Unforgettable. These are just a few of the adjectives I can think of to describe this wonderful novel! Caroline Bock’s The Other Beautiful People is the story of Amy Greene, a world-class multitasker who must deal with workplace turmoil, a medical emergency, family drama, a dislocating move from Manhattan to Maryland, and the ghosts of her past. All this, against the backdrop of New York City during and after 9/11. Highly recommend!
August 10, 2026
The Other Beautiful People is an insightful, beautifully-written, and intense piece of work that tracks the journey of its main character, Amy, through the weeks and months surrounding 9/11. Amy is compelling – I laughed with her, cried with her, worried with her over various dilemmas, and thoroughly enjoyed her ride through recent history. Caroline Bock has created a beautiful story with wonderfully-drawn characters throughout. It’s a must read!
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October 6, 2026In a novel that has it all, Amy Greene is a woman who wants it all - career, family, excitement, peace, and love. So much fun to read while at the same time a meaningful contemplation of many themes that are threaded through all of our lives. I especially loved the focus on relationships and how many different kinds there are and how they evolve. Truly beautiful writing. I shared copies with all my friends and family so they could experience it.
October 4, 2026
This novel is a masterclass in the power of brevity. The use of interlocking micros was a fresh and compelling form. I was in awe of how Bock was able to make the mundane moments of life feel glittering. The characters were loveable and complicated. I read this in DC, NYC, and on Amtraks between the two, which definitely enhanced the experience.
July 5, 2026
Set in post-9/11 New York City and DC, this is a marvelous read about a TV executive and her family, her work family, the ghosts of her past, and love.
October 29, 2026
Precocious, reverent, funny, and haunting. Amy is the brunch-bestie you didn't know you needed. A refreshingly honest look at the lives of working women.
Review of advance copy received from Author
I wasn't sure what to expect from this novel as the synopsis is short and doesn't give a lot of information. The Other Beautiful People is an engaging and interesting story about a woman being pulled in two directions shortly after 9/11.
I liked that Amy was a bit closer to my age and also had a son on the brink of adulthood. I felt stressed out for her as she had a lot on her plate at one time, especially at the end of what felt like a very long year. While I could feel her stress, I wasn't always on board with her decisions. She was definitely a flawed character and that was fleshed out between flashbacks and what was happening at the present time. I did feel bad for her with her mom's situation when she was growing up. I can't even imagine how awful that must have been. Perhaps it led to the kinds of decisions she made for herself as an adult, especially when it came to priorities.
The details really brought the story to life and I could easily picture people and places. There were a bunch of Jewish references throughout, which I appreciated.
The novel was written in a different kind of structure, where there weren't any chapters, just sections. It sometimes got confusing as to what was going on or who was saying what dialogue (like I had to backtrack to figure out the conversation). The business talk got to be a bit much for me at times and I didn't really understand what they were getting at.
A lot was happening in this novel, which added to Amy's stress. Her husband had a health issue, her boss was demanding her time and attention while also not revealing important information to her, she was dealing with the aftermath of one of her bad decisions, there was a scary situation during her travels between New York and DC, her son had some shocking news, etc. That all kept me turning the pages to see what would happen for Amy in the long run.
I like how Amy would cast people in her life as actors from classic films. I didn't really know who some of the actors were, but it reminded me of something I do with books, so obviously I had to cast this one! (If it had been written closer to when it took place, I would have cast Amy Brenneman as Amy.)
Overall, a worthwhile read. I could see it being discussed in book clubs.
(Trigger warnings below.)
Movie casting suggestions:
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TW: Death of mother after years of being mentally incapacitated, poverty, spouse has medical emergency, infidelity, mentions of lives lost on 9/11
I liked that Amy was a bit closer to my age and also had a son on the brink of adulthood. I felt stressed out for her as she had a lot on her plate at one time, especially at the end of what felt like a very long year. While I could feel her stress, I wasn't always on board with her decisions. She was definitely a flawed character and that was fleshed out between flashbacks and what was happening at the present time. I did feel bad for her with her mom's situation when she was growing up. I can't even imagine how awful that must have been. Perhaps it led to the kinds of decisions she made for herself as an adult, especially when it came to priorities.
The details really brought the story to life and I could easily picture people and places. There were a bunch of Jewish references throughout, which I appreciated.
The novel was written in a different kind of structure, where there weren't any chapters, just sections. It sometimes got confusing as to what was going on or who was saying what dialogue (like I had to backtrack to figure out the conversation). The business talk got to be a bit much for me at times and I didn't really understand what they were getting at.
A lot was happening in this novel, which added to Amy's stress. Her husband had a health issue, her boss was demanding her time and attention while also not revealing important information to her, she was dealing with the aftermath of one of her bad decisions, there was a scary situation during her travels between New York and DC, her son had some shocking news, etc. That all kept me turning the pages to see what would happen for Amy in the long run.
I like how Amy would cast people in her life as actors from classic films. I didn't really know who some of the actors were, but it reminded me of something I do with books, so obviously I had to cast this one! (If it had been written closer to when it took place, I would have cast Amy Brenneman as Amy.)
Overall, a worthwhile read. I could see it being discussed in book clubs.
(Trigger warnings below.)
Movie casting suggestions:
Amy: Margarita Levieva
Jack: Michiel Huisman
Owen: Dave Annable
Andy: Dan Jeannotte
Gracie: Nikki Duval*
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TW: Death of mother after years of being mentally incapacitated, poverty, spouse has medical emergency, infidelity, mentions of lives lost on 9/11
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