Notes from the Shelf

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Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney is a 320-page thriller set on the Isle of Amberly, a tiny Scottish island. Author Grady Green has everything he wants in life when his newest book makes the bestsellers list, and he just wants to celebrate the milestone with his beautiful wife Abby. He calls her to share the exciting news as she’s driving home, but then he hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, and then nothing. He finds her car by the cliff’s edge with the driver door open, her phone still there, but Abby has disappeared. A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief. He can’t sleep and he can’t write; he just wants to know what happened to Abby. His agent Kitty, Abby’s godmother, needs a book to publish though, so she sends him to the Isle of Amberly to get his life back on track. However, while there he sees the impossible—a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Honestly what a wild ride of a read this was. There were so many twists at the end, I wasn’t sure what was real anymore. Grady is the epitome of the unreliable narrator, or is he? I still can’t decide what actually happened and what was just in his head. The very end didn’t make much sense to me.

The vibes on the island were so creepy from the start. First, it’s wild there are zero birds on the island. Second, every time Grady asks when the next ferry is so he could maybe get more stuff from his car that he was forced to leave on the mainland, everyone is so cagey in answering, saying like “Oh, leaving already, are you?” It made me unsettled from the beginning.

I like the POVs from Abby, I think it added more context to the story and helped break up Grady’s constant paranoia. I didn’t want to like any of the people on the island because something seemed off, but with Grady being constantly paranoid about everything and everything around him, I wasn’t sure if I should be more sympathetic for the people witnessing him going insane. Although most of his paranoia was justified at the end.

I loved that Beautiful Ugly was the book Grady was writing in the book. I don’t always like that sort of thing, but this was pulled off very well, and the hint at the end of the book was such a fun detail, too. I’m not sure how I feel about him stealing the manuscript, but the way it was explained later, I think it was alright that he did that. Also, that’s nothing compared to what’s revealed later anyway.

I thought it was crazy the way they all played Grady, but I don’t find myself to be that sympathetic toward him either. He’s kind of an unlikeable character, but I don’t think I really liked any of the characters in this book. I do find the island group to be pretty cultish, but also these women have gone through a lot of trauma, so I guess it’s maybe understandable.

Overall, Beautiful Ugly was a fun thriller read, and I didn’t see the twists coming, but some of the commentary on the way the world is today and the extreme measures took in the book kind of took me out of the story a bit. I give it 4 stars.

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