Meh.

I was so bored the first half. This place is creepy but you don’t know why. And for half the book’s length that’s the gist. This and that slightly weird and creepy thing happens and….that’s it.

Grady says he loves his wife constantly. Then he’ll make snide remarks about her. But sure, he loves her.

I also picked up on the no men on the island by halfway through so I had a feeling the plot would have a “men are terrible” point to it and I wasn’t wrong.

Grady is a super unreliable narrator, very clearly, throughout the book, so the twist was surprising but not. And for me, the whole “what happened to his wife that night?” question was what kept me going - but then it felt like that was an aside and the real “plot twist” was the whole Kitty is Abby and that whole story which I personally thought was absolutely ludicrous. Not to mention, it’s presented to you in a massive word vomit by one character at the end instead of showing us the reveal in a better way. Not that it would have made it better but they always say show don’t tell and this was a massive TELL TELL TELL. A terrible attempt at being twisty and surprising.

Overall the story didn’t try hard enough until it tried too hard.

Beautiful Ugly had me completely hooked from the very first chapter. This book was packed with twists, secrets, and cliffhangers that had me constantly saying “OMG!” and “Wait… what?!”

The pacing was fantastic, and I loved never quite knowing who to trust. Just when I thought I had things figured out, another reveal would send me in a completely different direction. It was addictive, suspenseful, and incredibly easy to binge.

The reason this wasn’t quite a 5-star read for me comes down to the ending. I understood the final twist, but it didn’t land as strongly as the rest of the story. After such a tightly constructed mystery, the conclusion left me with a few questions and felt a little less convincing than everything that came before it. While I can appreciate what the author was aiming for, I struggled to fully reconcile some of the final decisions with the logic established earlier in the book.

That said, the journey was absolutely worth it. If you love twisty psychological thrillers that keep you guessing and leave you questioning everything you thought you knew, Beautiful Ugly is well worth picking up.