Rating:

“Fear can make something beautiful appear ugly.”

Author: Alice Feeney

Author Grady Green is a ruined man. He can’t write anymore. He can’t think of anything anymore except his disappeared, presumed dead wife, and the night that everything happened. He was on the phone with her, elated to tell her his good news, when she slammed on the breaks, got out of the car, and then exited his life forever. Her coat was found in the waves below the cliff she was driving up.

Now, at the behest of his agent, Grady is going to a reclusive cabin on a Scottish island where one of his favorite authors lived, wrote, and died. The hope is that the change of scenery will revive him and bring back his magic pen. But something isn’t right about this island, and soon Grady realizes that he can’t leave it. Then, he starts seeing a woman who looks a lot like his missing wife . . .

Beautiful Ugly has a great premise, and Feeney’s easy, descriptive writing style builds atmosphere and paranoia. Something here is desperately, deliciously wrong, and there is nothing like a secluded, inescapable place with creepy townsfolk to put me in my happy place. Initial plot: check. Love it. Initial atmosphere: double check. Everything is good and creepy here. Progression . . . well, that’s where we lose it.

For a while, a whole lot of nothing happens. Grady gets signs upon signs upon signs that someone on the island (or multiple someones) are trying to tell him something. First off, he finds an old, unpublished manuscript under the floorboard, caught in the hand of a skeleton. It all goes back to the murder story he was told on the ferry, so he knows that the owner of the arm is definitely dead. This seems like a come-to-Jesus moment – a moment to get yourself together and out of there. But Grady keeps quiet, and from here, his desperate decisions become increasingly nonsensical. How many clues does this man need before he realizes that the island’s inhabitants – all of whom are creepy women – are playing a brutal game with him? We realize it immediately . . . Grady takes 90% of the book to clue in to the conspiracy, and it’s a slow slog. How many clues and creepy occurrences does it take for the atmosphere to become repetitive and bland? The answer for me was exactly two.

Image by Enrique from Pixabay

Then, we got the twist . . . and honestly, it didn’t work for me. It tried way too hard. There were a LOT of plot holes, and the unreliable narrator (our main character Grady) made absolutely zero sense. Why did he hide the truth from us? Was he that deluded? And why this extremely elaborate plot – this completely 100% unrealistic plot? It fell flat. I couldn’t believe it, any of it. It was obvious that I was reading fiction, and since I’d never come to care for any of the characters (the missing wife is mostly a nonentity and Grady himself is whiney, weak, and clearly stupid), I didn’t even try to suspend my disbelief. I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed aspects of the narrative, especially the description of the island, but I always knew that I was reading a story – an unpolished one.

I didn’t hate Beautiful Ugly. I even enjoyed reading it somewhat, but I didn’t like it either, and I can’t truly recommend it. It’s not a bad book; it’s just another one of “those” kinds of thrillers with empty characters and over-the-top twists. Nothing unique here. Nothing new. It’s an inoffensive beach read for sure, but in a world full of extraordinary books, why waste the time on something that is just so-so?

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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