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A review by king_lyd
What Beauty There Is by Cory Anderson
3.0
This is a tense thriller that will have you turning the pages quickly. I think I actually managed to read it in one sitting.
The story switches between Jack and Ava’s points of view and this really allows you to enter into their heads and view their interactions from both sides.
I think I was gripped from the initial chapter of Jack as he comes home to find his mother has taken her own life. We are with him in that moment where those last remnants of childhood are stripped away and the weight of his responsibilities hit him.
Having such a tumultuous awakening we feel empathy for Jack right from the get-go which is only exacerbated when we see how he reacts when his little brother comes home.
While I feel that Jack and Matty’s relationship was very well emphasized and drawn out; I think that Jack and Ava’s relationship left a lot to be desired. They never really seemed to have much chemistry, and their romance felt shoe-horned in rather than progressed naturally. Maybe that was because the book was set over only a few days but I feel there could have been more to it.
The ending confused me a bit too. The last chapter/epilogue had me wondering if I’d read something wrong and had to back up a few pages. It wasn’t until I saw a post from someone else saying that there was a possibility that there would be another book which retold things from a different timeline that I think I got it.
The story switches between Jack and Ava’s points of view and this really allows you to enter into their heads and view their interactions from both sides.
I think I was gripped from the initial chapter of Jack as he comes home to find his mother has taken her own life. We are with him in that moment where those last remnants of childhood are stripped away and the weight of his responsibilities hit him.
Having such a tumultuous awakening we feel empathy for Jack right from the get-go which is only exacerbated when we see how he reacts when his little brother comes home.
While I feel that Jack and Matty’s relationship was very well emphasized and drawn out; I think that Jack and Ava’s relationship left a lot to be desired. They never really seemed to have much chemistry, and their romance felt shoe-horned in rather than progressed naturally. Maybe that was because the book was set over only a few days but I feel there could have been more to it.
The ending confused me a bit too. The last chapter/epilogue had me wondering if I’d read something wrong and had to back up a few pages. It wasn’t until I saw a post from someone else saying that there was a possibility that there would be another book which retold things from a different timeline that I think I got it.