Beautiful Ugly Became A Hot Mess   

Is it possible to have a best worst day of your life? I suppose it could be, somedays start off terrible and up wonderful, and other days start off wonderful and end up being terrible. For Grady Green, he had the best worst day of his life as his new release is a New York Times Bestseller. What ruined his evening though? Grady’s wife Abby disappears as she’s driving home. When Grady finds his wife’s car by the edge of the cliff there is no trace of Abby left, not a body or anything. A year later, Grady is still grieving, and he desperately wants to know what happened to Abby & why. Grady can’t sleep and can’t write. Grady’s agent Kitty sends him to the isolated Scottish Island of Amberly. It is there, Grady quickly figures out that not everyone on the island has something to hide and he see’s a woman who looks just like his beloved Abby. That’s of course just a coincidence? Right?

 Beautiful Ugly & A Mess

After enjoying Alice Feeney’s previous mystery novels Rock Paper Scissors & Daisy Darker when I heard about Beautiful Ugly of course I knew I was going to read it! I put it on hold at the library and was happy to get it in my hands when it was ready for pick up. I love the idea of an author on a remote Scottish Island and a mystery behind it of course. I like that Alice decided to have Grady tell the story from his point of view rather than just a female character telling her story. While Alice Feeney’s writing is descriptive and beautiful, the story moved slowly as though you were watching the ocean doing not much else except well…waving. The twists were about as believable as a lifetime movie and that’s not saying a whole lot. Beautiful Ugly had some good ideas but if it didn’t drag so much and if certain things made sense, this could have outdone her other novels Rock Paper Scissors & Daisy Darker. Instead, Beautiful Ugly  was a hot mess and became well… ugly.