Reviews with content warning for Violence - The City Beautiful

I bought The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros because I am obsessed with everything related to the 1893 Columbian Exposition, which happens to be surprisingly underrepresented in historical fiction. Thus, I was intrigued by this book because of its historical setting.

Blurb:

Alter Rosen is a seventeen-year-old Jewish immigrant who turned his back on a life of crime and wants nothing more than to keep his head down and work to buy his family’s passage from Romania to the United States. When his friend Yakov dies in a mysterious “accident,” Alter recognizes an ominous pattern of Jewish boys who go missing. Alter is spurred to avenge Yakov’s killer after he is possessed by Yakov’s dybbuk, or spirit, and he unwillingly ends up working with an old friend from his criminal days, Frankie. Alter struggles between his forbidden desire for Frankie, his need to avenge Yakov, and his resolution to be a law-abiding member of his religious and civic community as he finds himself confronting the wealthy and powerful who control Chicago.

Helpful Note:
If you are anything like me and do not recognize the many Yiddish words and phrases used in this book, the glossary is at the back of the book!

Review:

The strongest parts of The City Beautiful rest heavily on Polydoros’s strong character work, especially with the protagonist, Alter. Alter, despite being a little pathetic, is a believable and likable character and his voice shines through on every page. His motivations and development are easy to track as the plot escalates. Side characters such as Raizel and Frankie, although significantly less developed than Alter, are similarly likable and fun to read about.

The prose in the book is adequate most of the time, although Polydoros has an annoying habit of repeating certain phrases too often. Some of these phrases stuck out to me as particularly amateurish or fan-fictiony, such as “purred” or “my knees weakened.” The most annoying offense is that he describes one character’s eyes as being “sepia-colored” at least four times. Whenever he used these words or phrases, I was pulled out of the story.

The biggest flaw of this book is that Polydoros tries to do too much all at once, resulting in a story that feels claustrophobic and underdeveloped. Each individual element captured my interest—the backstories of the characters, the Jewish mythology, the dybbuk possession, the Chicagoan history, the queer love story, the mystery of the missing boys—but none was addressed with enough detail or complexity to sustain my attention. The book felt especially bogged down by the complicated plot in the last quarter, and I had to push myself to keep reading at times. The villains, in contrast with the main characters, came across as flat and one-dimensional. The City Beautiful could be significantly improved if the author either cut certain elements to focus on others or if he had expanded the book to address everything adequately.

As a history major who specializes in this time period, my expectations for historical accuracy are far more stringent than the average reader’s. I am pleased to say that the author gets the big details right. There were no glaring errors or inaccuracies that I picked up on, although I am not well-versed in Jewish immigration history. He captured the most important trends of the time and place, especially when it came to America’s class divide and industrialization.

***The rest of this review lies more in the realm of personal taste rather than objective criticism***

Modern historical fiction authors inevitably bring their biases and agendas into their stories, which can create tension when they want to create stories that are set in the past, yet at the same time champion certain contemporary ideas about identity and class. They especially face this tension when writing about queer relationships, because although queer people (at least how we think of them today) certainly existed in the past, people in the nineteenth century navigated gender in ways that can substantially deviate from the twenty-first-century paradigm. Authors can either research nineteenth-century gender and sexuality and attempt to create queer characters who accurately reflect how someone in that time period would think about gender and sexuality—even if that means writing about things that make modern readers uncomfortable or confused—or they can mold their characters in a way that appeals to current gender ideology. Either choice is completely valid, although I personally find the latter more interesting, and I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief when certain historical characters act anachronistically. Polydoros attempts to keep the historical situation in mind when he writes the queer relationship within The City Beautiful, yet for the most part, it feels quite modern.

I cannot speak to the historical portrayal of Jewishness, but my guess would be that it shares similarities in historical accuracy to the portrayals of queerness. At times, the author inserts what are clearly modern academic arguments about race, religion, and gender into the text, hitting the reader over the head with his viewpoint. To be clear, I do not mind historical fiction stories that have an agenda or something to say that pertains to modern society. However, I appreciate it when the issues are tackled with subtlety and sensitivity for the historical time period.

The Run-Down:

You will probably like The City Beautiful if you love the idea of a queer Jewish historical fiction fantasy/mystery, enjoy books in the Young Adult category of literature, and want to learn more about Chicago and Jewish culture/immigration in the 1890s.

You might not like The City Beautiful if you are uncomfortable with any of the content warnings (this book can be quite graphic and dark), if you dislike tropes commonly found within Young Adult literature, if you dislike historical fantasy, or if you are looking for a complex, nuanced dive into historical issues of race, religion, and queerness.

A Similar Book:

The Witch Haven by Sasha Peyton Smith. Similarities between these two books include:

· A Progressive-Era American setting

· Fantasy elements

· A protagonist who tries to solve the mysterious murder of someone close to them and uncovers the dark side of society’s ruling class in the process

· Romance

· Social justice themes

Content Warnings

ezwolf's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

The City Beautiful follows Alter, a young Jewish man working to try and bring his mother and sisters to America when his close friend is murdered and Alter is thrown into solving the mystery of who murdered Yakov as well as other Jewish young men.

One of the things I think this book does so well is mix real historical settings along with Jewish mythology. It also delves into (one of) the ways death is treated in Jewish culture. The antisemitism that Alter experiences and danger of being visibly Jewish is something that can be related to even now.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for queer Jewish representation!

Also I greatly appreciate that Aden Polydoros posts content warnings on his website for each of his books. I've copied a link to the ones specifically for this book below.

https://adenpolydoros.com/the-city-beautiful

Content Warnings

jonathaneden's review

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-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? No

4.5

Content Warnings

moonytoast's review

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challenging mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

This book and Ava Reid’s The Wolf and the Woodsman have really opened my eyes to the existence and beautiful complexity of Jewish fantasy and stories infused with Jewish mythology. In The City Beautiful, Alter Rosen is possessed by the dybbuk of a close friend, who was one of a number of young Jewish boys disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances under the shadow of the 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago. (It admittedly suffers from one of my bookish pet peeves—first person narration in a historical setting—but I will be forgiving in this case because of how well I enjoyed the story.)

Perfect for fans of Aiden Thomas’ Cemetery Boys and Roshani Chokshi’s The Gilded Wolves, The City Beautiful has proven itself to be a great addition to the budding young adult historical fantasy genre and cemented my interest in Polydoros’ future works.

Content Warnings

paracosim's review

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dark mysterious 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

4.5

It’s very rare for me to find books like this where the main characters are Jewish, let alone queer Jewish men like myself. This was an absolutely delightful read with fantastic writing, great characters, and high-stakes. I read it half-and-half on audiobook and with a physical copy, and while the audiobook narrator wasn’t my favorite (he sounded a bit too anxious lol), hearing the Yiddish and Hebrew words aloud was really nice and he did some fabulous character voices. I’m looking forward to what Aden Polydoros has in store next!

Content Warnings

jamielikestoread's review

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adventurous dark informative mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

leahjanespeare's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.0

This debut really surprised me! I expected to like it, but I didn’t expect to feel as fully immersed as I did. It is set in Chicago during the Chicago World Fair but not focused on the fair itself for the most part / also around the time of the Cold Storage Fire. Young boys are disappearing and their bodies are showing up around the city—clearly murder is afoot. Alter is a gay, Jewish immigrant from Romania working hard to raise money to bring his mother and sisters over to America. As Alter’s friends start disappearing he gets caught up in the treachery and becomes in danger himself.

I’ll warn you this book deals with HEAVY topics with mentions of child molestation, rape, and antisemitism and homophobia. But because of this integration of some ‘lost’ topics for the time period (or intentionally buried), I am so glad this book exists. I had no idea of the intense antisemitism of the era especially around immigrants. It’s horrifying and needs to be examined more, acknowledged - especially in this setting. There are so many books on the Chicago World Fair and the city in general at that time that focus on famous murders but (in my reading experience) have failed to integrate a lot of what marginalized people had to deal with at the same time.

I’m neither gay nor Jewish but my impression, as an outsider reading about these identities, is that they have been portrayed very well, based on the author’s own identity/history/research.

Really looking forward to more from this author.

Content Warnings

unicornsbookshelf's review

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dark emotional mysterious 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? No

4.75

I have received an ARC of this book from Edelweiss+, in exchange for an honest review thank you!

TWs: drowning, choking, possession, internalized homophobia. antisemitism, violence, sexual assault, death of a loved one

When The City Beautiful is described as dark, gothic, and queer, you can absolutely be sure the description is accurate. I really hope the finished copy comes with trigger warnings because the ones above are just some from the top of my head. Now that we're clear on that, we can get to the actual review.

The City Beautiful is set in 19th-century Chicago during the World's Fair and the atmosphere the author has crafted is out of this world. It reminded me a bit of The Diviners in this aspect. The way the city was described was almost cinematic. You could feel the dust from the streets sticking to your skin. Everything felt so vibrant and alive and it makes the novel even more hard-hitting.

The characters were all likable and well-developed. Alter was such a relatable protagonist because you rarely see novels about queer characters who struggle with the fact that their sexual orientation is looked down on by the religion they were raised in. I'm personally not Jewish so you should check out some own voices reviews for more insight on this topic but still being afraid that no one will accept your sexual orientation because of religious reasons resonated with me deeply. I also find it beautiful that the main character isn't forced to pick between his religion and his queerness. I do feel that romance wasn't the main focus of this book so if you come here to get a very romance-oriented story, you're going to be disappointed. It was very important but the main point was Alter growing as a person and learning to accept himself and stand up for himself.

The plot was a very murder mystery-like kind of story with a paranormal twist. It was interesting and kept me engaged. There was very well-crafted suspense that kept me on the edge of my seat and made it hard to put the book down.

All in all, The City Beautiful is a stunning novel with a rich atmosphere and compelling characters and it feels very unique compared to other YA books I've read. I highly recommend it.

Content Warnings

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