Beautiful Ugly
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3.9 • 109 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
‘Her best book yet’ – Harlan Coben, author of Fool Me Once
The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists, Alice Feeney, returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage . . . and revenge.
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife as she’s driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by a cliff edge, the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there . . . but his wife has disappeared.
A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible: a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.
Wives think their husbands will change, but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change, but they do.
‘Magnetic and jaw-dropping’ – Mary Kubica, bestselling author of Local Woman Missing
‘Unforgettable’ – Chris Whitaker, bestselling author of We Begin at the End
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s with good reason that British writer Alice Feeney has been dubbed “Queen of Twists”. Her thought-provoking books are carefully plotted to surprise us in the most satisfying ways. This eerie psychological thriller is no exception, setting up the suspense right from the opening. Author Grady Green is waiting to hear whether his new book has cracked the bestseller list. He’s also waiting for his wife Abby, an investigative journalist who often exposes wrongdoing committed by men. He phones her on her way home, but the call ends abruptly—and Grady later discovers that Abby has disappeared from her car near a cliff edge. A year later, while still in the depths of despair, Grady spots a woman who looks just like Abby, flooding him with uncertainty about not just his wife’s wellbeing but their marriage. Set largely on an evocatively described secluded Scottish island, this is a gripping locked-room mystery with an unreliable narrator and delicious seeds of doubt planted everywhere.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Feeney (Good Bad Girl) stumbles with this hackneyed tale of a grieving mystery author who seeks solace on a remote Scottish island. A year after bestseller Grady Green's wife, Abby, disappears, his life hits the skids—he hardly sleeps, he's late on delivering his new novel, and his financial troubles force him to move into "the worst hotel in London." Salvation comes via Grady's agent, Kitty, who offers him the use of her deceased client's cabin on the secluded Isle of Amberley. On the ferry over, Grady thinks he sees Abby; soon, his hallucinations worsen, and he grows wary of the frosty locals. With zero cell service, no car, and a variety of macabre surprises waiting in his cabin, it takes Grady a while to notice Amberley's conspicuous absence of birds—and men. Feeney assembles her plot from familiar parts: elements of The Wicker Man, Gone Girl, and Shutter Island jostle for space among flat descriptions ("The house... is enormous, by far the biggest I've seen on the island. It should have been called the Big House on the Hill") and flatter characters. Worse, her trademark twists are more far-fetched than ever. It's a letdown. Agents: Kari Stuart, CAA, and Johnny Gellar, Curtis Brown U.K.
Customer Reviews
Don’t bother
Badly written with annoying characters. I gave up half way through.