Read with Fern

“Author Grady Green calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears her slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car, his wife has disappeared.
A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible – a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.”

Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

I will start by identifying myself as not a fan of Alice Feeney. This is the fifth book of hers I’ve read, and I’ve more or less felt the same way about all of them.

Like most of Feeney’s books, this had a moody and atmospheric environment, unreliable narrators, and twists every 20 pages or so. Unfortunately, this book has several negative Feeney attributes as well, such as whiny one-dimensional characters, repetitive and dull writing, and asinine plot choices. 

We follow Grady, an author, as he deals with the aftermath of his wife, Abby, disappearing. A year after her disappearance, Grady moves to an isolated island to try and regain a grip on his reality. Instead, it feels like he loses the final connections he had to the outside world. As a character, Grady sucks. At first I thought that was on purpose, since he’s clearly a deadbeat husband who needs the world to revolve around him. But as I continued reading, it became clear that Grady sucks because there’s zero character development. His only character traits are whiny, annoying, and author. 

Abby isn’t much better, and her “plot twists” had me screaming in rage. I won’t get into the details and spoil anything, but everything related to Abby made this book painful to read. 

I did truly enjoy the slice of life of the island, with its eerie inhabitants. Unfortunately, that was just about the only part of the book I enjoyed. There’s a lot of mind-blowing twists, in a “this literally doesn’t make sense” way more than a “i never saw this coming” way. And for the amount of twists and turns the story has, the plot’s pacing plods on at an unbearably slow speed. 

I liked the plot’s concept, and enjoyed the setting of the book, along with the secondary characters. There weren’t enough redeeming qualities to win me over, but there’s definitely potential if this style of writing is something you like!

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the free advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review!