A review by evanipatel
One Year of Ugly by Caroline MacKenzie

3.0

“we were rattling with nerves and resentment in our own cage, thank you very much, that we’d hauled ass all the way to Trinidad just to fall victim to Ugly, yet another megalomaniacal prick. But we stayed mum—because no matter what we were going through, at least we could buy Panadol for our stress migraines and toilet paper for our anxiety-induced diarrhea and groceries for our comfort eating. Maybe the grass here was greener, just fertilized with an equally pungent brand of horseshit.”

See after reading this my first thought was yes! What an awesome story about family relationships with very real struggles. However, despite my lackluster 3 star rating, my thoughts were pretty scattered on One year of ugly. The first half of the book was pretty slow and I found myself a little bored, but the second half finally got me much more excited about the story as the stakes got higher and higher for the Palacio family.

Besides the writing which I believe is wonderful with its humorous tone, my biggest problem was that I just couldn’t connect with the story and mostly the main character until I was more than halfway through the book. On an objective scale this book could be a solid 4 star read for many people and maybe this much quarantine just kept me from being as immersed as I would have liked to have been.

For me, I wasn’t very interested in Yola and Román’s romance either. There wasn’t much more to it for me other than another forbidden type romance between a not-so-bad boy and the female protagonist.

It was great reading other parts where the novel really shines about an immigrant’s story outside of the US which is more unique than many other books. Mackenzie creates such emotional moments between the various families that stay with the Palacios and the fear they have performing jobs for Ugly while keeping a collected front.

Overall Mackenzie’s writing kept me going with plenty of genuinely funny scenes throughout, but One Year Of Ugly failed to sell me as the compelling, drama-filled forbidden romance it tried to be.

Thanks so much to 37 Ink, Simon and Schuster, and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.