Pretty Boy

by Silja Evelyn

How far would you go to pull yourself our of the dark? Or someone you love? This is the story of a young couple's struggle to survive in a world full of addiction, desperation and isolation - until one of them is offered an easy way out. But like any 'easy' solution, this one has a price, too. A high one.

Pretty Boy is a bold and touching literary creation, set in a darkly veiled city that offers little comfort or forgiveness. It’s a harsh place where anyone can get lost… or occasionally rescued.

338 pages, Paperback

Published April 3, 2020

About the author

Silja Evelyn is Finnish, but she learnt English from a young age and now writes in English. She moved to the UK when she was 19 years old to study at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and attained BA (Hons) in Film Studies. Since then, she has moved to Scotland and become a fiction editor after completing Master's in Publishing.

Silja likes dark and gritty stories, which shows in her debut novel; 'Pretty Boy' was published in April 2020.

Reviews

[Daniel Lorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty Boy is an impressively written novel which is both gritty and touching simultaneously. The fantastic character development is paced perfectly, which allows you to gradually get to know the main characters, who are all fighting their own individual demons. Pretty Boy will likely strike a familiar chord with anyone who has faced harsh times, especially when dealing with circumstances seemingly out of their control.

Once you get started with this one, you will quickly become consumed in the world the author has created. Pretty Boy kept me hooked right through till the end.

Excellent.

[M.J. Pankey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gutpunch of a story that paints the complexity of life, love, hope, and loss with such veracity that it will stay with you long after its over.

This book was SO good! From the first moment we see the MC, I immediately identified so much with their circumstance, their outlook, even their response to other people around them. It was like they were mirroring my own thoughts as events unfolded.
At its core, this is a story about love and survival in a world where the odds are stacked--STACKED--against anyone who has ever taken a wrong turn or made a decision with friends that wasn't supposed to be lifechanging but was because of absolutely nothing within your control. The struggle of the MC and their choices in the book, having been in a similar situation myself in a past life, made me feel things that honestly, I'm not sure I was ready for, but I couldn't tear my eyes away for a second, even when I disagreed with their choices. I couldn't really hold it against them. After all, hindsight is 20/20, which is something they didn't have in the book. But just like the MC, never giving up hope for a good outcome, I also found myself hoping along with them, even though I knew, I KNEW, how it was going to play out.
The author's skill at creating the same phenomena of hopeless hope as a reader that a person feels in the MC's situation was just....omg....brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
The writing is just beautiful! First person pov executed so well that I felt like the MC was actually myself. We don't even learn the MC's name until the very last sentence (which I didn't even realize until the last sentence), which I really liked because it removed a layer of separation between the reader and story and it just made the themes in this book hit with so much power.
I want to see more from this author because she's absolutely amazing!
If you're looking for a real story with conplex themes of love, regret, hope, loss, and survival in the broken system that is the world we live in, you need to read this one!