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A review by pagesplotsandpints
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
4.25
Read Completed 11/17/24 | 4.25 stars
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for this audiobook review copy!
Alice Feeney is always an auto-read author and I think BEAUTIFUL UGLY is one of her better novels! I loved the moody setting of a remote Scottish island and there's plenty of suspicion to go around. This book was readable from start to finish and immediately hooked me at a time where not a lot was grabbing my attention.
The book is about author Grady Green, who takes a temporary leave/writing retreat to a remote Scottish island in a cabin lent to him by his agent in the hopes that he can get out of his writing slump. It's been a year since his wife disappeared while he was on the phone with her, and he has to assume at this point that she's presumed dead but starts seeing reminders of her when heading to Amberly Island. More and more odd things start happening on the island as its history makes itself known and Grady starts to find out that there's much more than meets the eye...
I love a locked room mystery and despite having an entire island to roam, this is exactly what this book was. A tiny island with no tourists or visitors allowed, no phone or internet service, and even no cars makes things terribly exciting and suspenseful. With only 25 residents, when anything odd happens, you know it's someone on the island and just wonder what their motives are. Alice Feeney did a great job at bringing this island and all of its residents to life. At times, I forgot I was reading and could really picture everything that was going on, and I could definitely see this as a Netflix limited series like so many Harlan Coben novels.
The pacing really picked up towards the end, and that's probably my only decent hesitation about loving this book. The beginning had its mysteries as we get to see (or don't see) Abby's disappearance on the page. The book skips to one year later as Grady's agent is arranging for him to head to the cabin on Amberly Island and things were still interesting, but do take a little while to set up. There are some suspenseful flashes here and there, and there are chapters where we see a past version of Abby before she disappeared, so there is still a lot going on to set up this thriller. I just wasn't as invested as I could have been to really amp up this rating, but it's all still solid!
The ending was definitely more fast-paced, with things being revealed left and right! Most of the things I kind of saw coming by the time we got there, but there were a few missing pieces to tie everything together that really brought it full circle. Some of it was a little fast and furious and I wish that we had maybe spent more time on them earlier on so it wasn't such an onslaught of information all at once, but it definitely captured everything and tied up all of the loose ends -- including some things I had forgotten about! Some of it was maybe a little bit of a stretch, but hey, that's why it's an entertaining thriller novel. We don't always want to read about everything being a given because that's not exciting.
Like some of my favorite thrillers, just when you think it's over, it's not! There was plenty of excitement to go around at the end, and it adds one more touch of darkness before it's lights out for this book.
I'm so happy to have enjoyed this book and I think this is one of Alice Feeney's better novels for me! Definitely a solid thriller read.
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for this audiobook review copy!
Alice Feeney is always an auto-read author and I think BEAUTIFUL UGLY is one of her better novels! I loved the moody setting of a remote Scottish island and there's plenty of suspicion to go around. This book was readable from start to finish and immediately hooked me at a time where not a lot was grabbing my attention.
The book is about author Grady Green, who takes a temporary leave/writing retreat to a remote Scottish island in a cabin lent to him by his agent in the hopes that he can get out of his writing slump. It's been a year since his wife disappeared while he was on the phone with her, and he has to assume at this point that she's presumed dead but starts seeing reminders of her when heading to Amberly Island. More and more odd things start happening on the island as its history makes itself known and Grady starts to find out that there's much more than meets the eye...
I love a locked room mystery and despite having an entire island to roam, this is exactly what this book was. A tiny island with no tourists or visitors allowed, no phone or internet service, and even no cars makes things terribly exciting and suspenseful. With only 25 residents, when anything odd happens, you know it's someone on the island and just wonder what their motives are. Alice Feeney did a great job at bringing this island and all of its residents to life. At times, I forgot I was reading and could really picture everything that was going on, and I could definitely see this as a Netflix limited series like so many Harlan Coben novels.
The pacing really picked up towards the end, and that's probably my only decent hesitation about loving this book. The beginning had its mysteries as we get to see (or don't see) Abby's disappearance on the page. The book skips to one year later as Grady's agent is arranging for him to head to the cabin on Amberly Island and things were still interesting, but do take a little while to set up. There are some suspenseful flashes here and there, and there are chapters where we see a past version of Abby before she disappeared, so there is still a lot going on to set up this thriller. I just wasn't as invested as I could have been to really amp up this rating, but it's all still solid!
The ending was definitely more fast-paced, with things being revealed left and right! Most of the things I kind of saw coming by the time we got there, but there were a few missing pieces to tie everything together that really brought it full circle. Some of it was a little fast and furious and I wish that we had maybe spent more time on them earlier on so it wasn't such an onslaught of information all at once, but it definitely captured everything and tied up all of the loose ends -- including some things I had forgotten about! Some of it was maybe a little bit of a stretch, but hey, that's why it's an entertaining thriller novel. We don't always want to read about everything being a given because that's not exciting.
Like some of my favorite thrillers, just when you think it's over, it's not! There was plenty of excitement to go around at the end, and it adds one more touch of darkness before it's lights out for this book.
I'm so happy to have enjoyed this book and I think this is one of Alice Feeney's better novels for me! Definitely a solid thriller read.