Beautiful Ugly

This book was a slow burn and then an absolute forest fire at full blaze by the end. I was not expecting that final twist at the very end. Thoroughly enjoyed this one!

After a lot of recommendations to read Alice Feeney my wife finally just told me I had to read this book, that it fit my style of book perfectly. Wow was she right. This was such a fun read with a constant questioning of the narrator’s reliability as their world is slowly revealed to the reader.

In the best way possible, I could not figure out what was actually happening in this book! However, the ending was very satisfying as everything neatly came together, and it all clicked perfectly like a giant Lego set! 4 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️!

well, that took a turn, didn't it? I wasn't expecting that ending!

Well that was delightful.

5 star journey with a 3 star ending.

I absolutely was hooked on this book through the whole journey. I thought it was going to be a Wayward Pines-esque small town psychological thriller. I was 100% sure it was going to be a 5 star read. 

But the ending just was messy. I didn't see one of the twists coming but the others seemed obvious. I'm usually not a big person to rate on an ending alone but I really hated the end. I won't say more because spoilers 

So is this journey worth reading? Yes but be prepared you might not like the end either. 

I read it in a day, it's a really good book. The ending was a little flat for me.

Thanks to the publisher and Libro.fm for the alc!

Great audio production with excellent narrators and a very atmospheric setting. Other than that, I can't say I really enjoyed it. If everyone is suspicious and everything is strange, then nothing is really surprising? I'm all for ladies and revenge, but the whole plot seemed overly dramatic and I didn't really care for the characters.

*1.5 stars. This is not good. Not the thriller I had hoped for at all, but one riddled with poorly-conceived inner monologues from an unlikable protagonist with twists beyond ridiculous and a jumbled mess of an ultimate premise that proved truly unwieldy for Feeney. It is not a feminist manifesto disguised as a page-turner either, as I would posit may have been the overarching idea. I would love to visit the island of Amberly, the only thing in the book I cared even remotely for and which was wildly undiscovered by this author. Disappointed.

I love Alice Feeney's books. They're great psychological, domestic thrillers with a twisty twist at the end. You could say Alice is the queen of the twisty twist. She has outdone herself with this one.

On the day he discovers he is a New York Times bestselling author, Grady Green's wife, Abby, disappears. One year later, Abby is still missing, and Grady has been unable to write another book. His agent offers him the use of a cabin she owns on a remote island off the coast of Scotland. With his dog, Columbo, for company, Grady sets off for the island of Amberley.

Cue strange goings on that Grady attributes to his insomnia.

I'm not going to give away any more of the plot, except to say that all is not as it seems on the island.

Beautiful Ugly is compulsive reading. It's edge-of-your-seat stuff, and when that final twist comes it takes you by surprise. Nope, didn't see that one coming. 👀

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the digital ARC.