Beautiful ugly: The derailing of Alice Feeney's 7th book

You'll know that I am a fan of Alice Feeney is you've read my Alice Feeney round up post where I review the six books the author had written at that point. Other than I know who you are, I've given all top ratings. I like Feeney's novels as they are a unique take on the dark and complex thriller genre. They're sometimes a little bonkers, but mostly just intelligently written. Feeney's novels are one example of why I love the genre: I admire writers who can come up with clever ideas and weave them into stories about the bad things humans do to one another.

Beautiful ugly is book number 7 for Feeney. I am still workshopping how I feel about it, but my thoughts as they stand for now are documented below.

Beautiful ugly | Published January 2025 | Read April 2025

Beautiful ugly sets the scene for the reader by making it clear that author Grady Green loves his journalist wife, Abby. It's a shock for him, then, when Abby disappears one night after stopping her car suddenly on the way home to come to the aid of a stranger. One year later, Grady is consumed by grief and is unable to write (or sleep). He's falling apart, so his agent sends him to a small Scottish island to write in the isolated cabin of another of other clients, a much loved and now deceased author. Grady's agent hopes he can get his mojo back by channelling the vibes of the cabin's former owner. There is still no word from Abby nor any evidence to explain her disappearance.

I spent most of Beautiful ugly engrossed in the story and Grady's journey. The book has lots of classic thriller ingredients: a creepy remote island, a bunch of eccentric inhabitants, the ongoing mystery of Abby's disappearance, and Grady's sightings on the island of a woman he thinks is his wife. The portentous, eerie atmosphere of the island alone is enough to grab the reader's attention, as is the question over Abby's fate. Feeney is known for writing stories where all is not as it seems - and completely pulling the rug out from under the reader - so I waited patiently for something momentous to happen.

The trouble is that once the truth comes to light, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It feels like - as another reviewer has commented - that the story exists only for the twist. Unusually for Feeney, there is no substance to the story without said twist. Sure, the twists in her other books have often been slightly bonkers, but they have made sense within the context of the story. Cleverly-written stories in this genre should be just that, and the reveals and twists add to that cleverness. The story shouldn't be a bit rubbish just for the sake of a twisty twist.

Feeney has written nasty characters before, but I still cared about them. No one in Beautiful ugly is particularly relatable or sympathetic. Buying into Grady as a character was a struggle as the story progressed. Also, Feeney is also known for using unreliable narrators, but this time, the plot device is nonsensical in the way that Feeney uses it. (To say anything else would be to spoil.)

Again, I don't want to give too much away, but another thing that doesn't work for me in the book is the misandrist agenda. Feeney may have been going for a feminist girl power vibe, but it falls short on that account. The latter part of the book made me feel uncomfortable, and I don't understand why Feeney chose to take the book down that path from a promising premise.

I've given the book a 3-star rating, but that's really 2 stars rated up for Columbo, the black Labrador, my favourite character in the book. I'm also sticking with the 3 stars for the setting, and the book's foundations and promise, not for the way the whole thing is derailed. Feeney had a great idea, she just fails to deliver on it. I'll still read Feeney's next novel, but Beautiful ugly is now my least favourite of her books to date.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐