Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Beautiful World, Where Are You

Beautiful World, Where Are You? is this perfect balance between grounded in reality and super philosophical. I’ve heard people rave about Rooney’s characterisation with her previous works (I’ve read Normal People and have Conversations with Friends sitting on my coffee table waiting to be read) but it is Beautiful Word, Where Are You? that I can see what they’re on about. The characters have so much depth and dimension.

Content Warnings

lghrndn's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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sfbookgirl's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It’s the book of the season and it’s become a brand of its own 😆 It took me ages to get through Rooney’s newest release which is most likely due to the fact that I was super busy and had no time to read. Beautiful World, Where Are You revolves around Alice and her friend Eileen who are good friends but live in different cities. We learn about their separate lives through both their individual narratives and between email correspondences with, of course, no quotation marks as it’s a Rooney book after all.

This is definitely one of those books that you will have to read for yourself to decide. Did I like it? Yes? Will I read her next novel? Probably not. Rooney's newest novel is a book that talks about nothing and everything at once. I resonated with the characters' inner, panicked thoughts about the world’s environmental crisis and found it funny that this book is incredibly autobiographical. I’ve always thought Rooney was made to be some sort of mystery with her lack of social media presence and the vague events reflected in her novels. While it’s clear that Alice’s character is Rooney, I found that I learned so much more about her and yet nothing at the same time in her newest book. So there you have it, Rooney is still quite the mysterious woman.

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questingnotcoasting's review against another edition

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reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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alicefranko's review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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majeczka_'s review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Unfortunately pretty underwhelming, even a bit disappointing.
The main characters were boring, the very long emails (beauty? Jesus? bronze age???) were unnecessarily pseudo-deep and don't get me started on the many many many sex scenes that did not bring anything to the story!
I'm a big fan of Conversations with friends and liked normal people very much, but this story lacked the rawness and the effortless flow that I loved so much about Rooney's other novels.

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