A review by micaelabrody
Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter

4.0

Books about Fucked Up Girls tend to make me cringe instinctively. When I started this book I was not really expecting to enjoy it—it felt very much like a teenage version of The Art of Crash Landing, but it wasn’t too long so I kept with it. I was glad I did because in the end I truly liked it a lot. It ended up taking me a long time to finish in part because I didn’t want to finish it (and if the bus was less crowded—I could never get a seat). This book’s blurb called it fast and dirty, and that’s absolutely correct. It was at times melancholy and sympathetic and at times chilling, and managed to balance these things. You could feel the grime, the neon, the smoke; it felt too bright and hard; it pulsed like a hangover. It was beautiful in an ugly way, and the first Fucked Up Girl book that actually delivered on its promise.