Once Upon a Time

Reviews / Votes

* New York Times Bestseller * LA Times Bestseller * USA Today Bestseller * "A book that is as alluring and intriguing as its subject, Once Upon a Time is a marvelous read. We all 'know' Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, but we don't really know her. Now, with Beller's book, this charismatic, iconic woman becomes real, which makes her tragedy that much more painful. This is a book you will gobble up."
-Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book and The Orchid Thief

"Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of Jackie's son, John, has always been such an enigma-until now. In Once Upon a Time, Elizabeth Beller reveals the true woman behind the mystery, and what a woman she turns out to be: fabulous, fierce, fashionable, flawed... formidable. Despite its sad ending, Carolyn's journey as told on these pages somehow still feels like a triumph."
-J. Randy Taraborrelli, New York Times bestselling author of Jackie: Public, Private, Secret

"Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy's Yohji Yamamoto wraps and Calvin Klein suits told us more about the insatiable appetites of a voracious public than they revealed about the woman who wore them. But now, she is unveiled as never before: the woman who was so much more than a fashion icon and a famous wife."
-Robin Givhan, Pulitzer Prize winning fashion journalist and author of The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History

"Once Upon a Time is an intimate and sympathetic portrait of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy that is as enthralling as she was."
-Dana Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

"Composed with ineffable poignancy, Once Upon a Time reveals Bessette-Kennedy's existence beyond just being the wife of a beloved presidential son. Interweaving the chilling storyline of the violations by paparazzi who turned Bessette-Kennedy into their 'favorite victim,' making her world smaller and provoking her into a cycle of crisis, Beller so starkly demonstrates that 'fear led Carolyn to hide away, something completely at odds with her personality.'"
-Carl Sferrazza Anthony, author of Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy

"In this heartbreaking biography, Elizabeth Beller has captured the life and milieu of the most glamorous couple of the 1990s."
-Edmund White, bestselling author of A Boy's Own Story and The Humble Lover "The absorbing biography isn't without juicy moments, but also doesn't rely on sensationalism to make the case for Bessette-Kennedy's importance; it's a nuanced, complicated book about a person who had similar qualities, and it's a must read for anyone who wants to go beyond the surface of a story that's captivated the world for more than two decades."
-Town & Country

"Once Upon a Time wants us to know that, through it all, they were meant to be."
-New York Times

"Beller, writing into a world, and an America, at war with itself, is wiser than to lean on legend. She leans instead on grace, and forgiveness, for a woman who lived inside 'the imposition of a narrative line on disparate images.'"
-Air Mail

"Twenty-five years after her death in a plane crash, a new book, Once Upon a Time, delves adoringly into the life story of JFK Jr.'s late wife."
-Washington Post

"A sensitive portrait of a misunderstood public figure."
-Kirkus