Beautiful Ugly | Alice Feeney
REVIEWED BY LINDA HILL
When author Grady Green’s wife Abby vanished from her car on her way home, part way through a phone call with him, his world fell apart. A year later, financially broke, grieving and unable to write, Grady’s editor Kitty sends him to a remote Scottish Island to reset his life. But this is only the start of his problems…
Beautiful Ugly: book review & synopsis
Having heard hugely positive things about Alice Feeney’s writing I had very high expectations for this book. Every single one was surpassed. It is, quite simply, fantastic.
There’s a creepy, almost supernatural, sense of menace pervading the text so that Beautiful Ugly feels unsettling from the very beginning. However, this is only one compelling aspect of what is a magnificent thriller.
The story is fast paced with moments that leave the reader totally stunned. It is so deftly plotted that I’d defy any reader to guess the full truth about what’s happening. It’s impossible to say more without revealing aspects of the narrative but rest assured this is a book not to be missed.
I loved the oxymoron of the title and chapter headings because they reflect perfectly the way life is made up of beautiful and ugly moments spent with people who can be both beautiful and ugly in their actions, their memories and their relationships. The psychology of behaviour presented here is fabulous so that as the action unfolds it’s hard to judge if this is a thriller, a supernatural tale or a straightforward story. It’ll have readers perplexed and mesmerised.
The setting adds menace to the story
The remote island of Amberley is described with such clarity it places the reader there with Grady. With its remoteness and inaccessibility there’s a real sense of claustrophobia that adds to the threatening atmosphere. Swirling mists, inexplicable sounds, oppressive trees, strange inhabitants and unusual occurrences have you looking over your shoulder every bit as much as Grady does.
As Grady becomes more unstable it feels as if you’re experiencing his emotions and life with him. The switching of perspective between his voice and Abby’s means that it’s impossible not to feel as if these are real, flawed people and to care about them. At the same time, Alice Feeney made me loathe Grady even as I worried for his sanity so that my responses became just as much a contradiction as the title is.
A book that is impossible to review adequately without spoilers, Beautiful Ugly might well be the best thriller you’ll read this year. I thought it was amazing.
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney is out now (Macmillan, HB, £16.99) and available from Amazon.
Read more fiction reviews by Linda Hill including A Skye Full of Stars by Sue Moorcroft, Foster’s Mill by Val Wood, All I Want For Christmas by Karen Swan, City of Silk by Glennis Virgo, Things We Lose In Waves by Lucy Ayrton, Beautiful People by Amanda Jennings and A Merry Little Christmas by Cathy Bramley.
