Reviews - The City Beautiful

480 reviews for:

The City Beautiful

Aden Polydoros

4.19 AVERAGE

pageglue's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It’s 1893 in Chicago, and on one side of town, pro-worker movements are starting to stand up to their factory bosses, while on the other, the well-to-do are enjoying the glitz and spectacle of The World’s Fair. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the city, Alter, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, is trying to put his past behind him by keeping himself busy in his work, saving money to bring his family over. But when his best friend and roommate Yakov is the latest victim in a string of murdered Jewish boys in the city, Alter begins to investigate. But grief is a fickle thing, and in order for him to move forward, he must look inward and back to what he has been running from.

This might just be my new favourite YA novel! Polydoros is so great at establishing a sense of place. The city really came to life, and the world building was coloured in to the edges with details about the plight of the worker, discussions of anarchism and some immigrant resistance to it, and Jewish/Yiddish language and culture. Online, this book isn’t listed as horror but as ‘dark fantasy’, but boy was this story nightmarish. Aside from surviving the everyday antisemitism that these characters faced, the paranormal elements were pretty damn creepy, and at times so hallucinatory that the unreal blurred seamlessly into reality.

Polydoros also treated his characters with such tenderness. They were so well-written and real, and I really loved the gay romantic subplot. The themes were expertly woven into the plot and character arcs, and the stakes kept getting higher and higher all the way to the end.

Given the story is about finding a serial killer who’s murdering Jews, obviously there’s a lot of Jewish trauma in this book, including a scene with antisemitic slurs. There’s also a brief mention of sexual assault. But despite how dark this book can get, there’s also the hope of overcoming, and the love found in community and looking out for each other. I highly recommend this one!