"Pretty"

Jillian Lauren is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Some Girls and has an MFA from Antioch University. She lives in Los Angeles with her son and husband, Weezer bass player, Scott Shriner.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Pretty, and reported the following:

Page 69:

I clock out with confidence. Stop believing in one thing and you make room for believing in something else. Hopefully something that works a little better.

A hairdo can change the course of your whole day. Maybe your whole life, I tell myself, if you let it.

1536 hours down. 64 hours left to go.

Page 69 of Pretty is a short one. This is the entirety of it.

Bebe Baker, Pretty's narrator, is counting down the final 72 hours until her graduation from the purgatory that is beauty college. Bebe has survived a disfiguring car accident that killed her boyfriend and she is living at a state-sponsored halfway house, trying to stay sober and rebuild her life. This passage is representative of the book because Bebe's insistence on the possibility of transformation is what gives her the tenacity to walk her tortuous path.

Bebe is a self described ex-everything: ex-Christian, ex-stripper,ex-drug addict, ex-pretty girl. She describes herself by what she's not because what she is, is still unclear to her. This passage demonstrates her desire to define a faith that is relevant to her changing sense of self. Bebe's search for that faith is the central journey of the book.

Learn more about the book and author at Jillian Lauren's website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 99 Test: Some Girls.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue