Book Review: Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney




Review is also available on my site: https://roxannacross.com/2025/09/15/b...

**This review contains spoilers**

Feeney’s latest mystery, published January 14, 2025, is available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook formats, as well as at your local library or through the Libby App. If you’re a fan of psychological thrillers where nothing is as it seems, the twist is so illogical it’s laughable. The characters are unreliable and impossible to connect with; this one is for you. At least listen to the audiobook and enjoy Richard Armitage’s voice as he reads one of the main POVs and Tuppence Middleton narrates the other. Both do a fantastic job with the material they had to work with. The blurb promises a gripping dark thriller about marriage and revenge. Admittedly, Feeney delivers on the latter; however, it makes no sense. The opening chapter had promise, with some suspense, but then descends into a rabbit hole of ludicrousness.

Grady Green is having the best worst day of his life as he just got the news that his latest book hit the NYT bestsellers list, and he has no one to share it with since his wife isn’t home. He calls her up, hears her slam her brakes, and tells him a woman is lying in the middle of the lane, and then nothing. When he reaches the scene, he finds her car abandoned, and his wife, Abby, nowhere in sight. A year later, still mourning his missing wife, Grady can’t sleep, write, or function on a basic human level. His agent offers him an opportunity to travel to a tiny, remote Scottish island where he can get his life back on track. The warning: ‘Careful what you wish for’ comes to mind as Feeney introduces the silliest plot twist thus far, with an island carrying a depraved misandrist agenda.

Grady is at his wits’ end, believing he’s seeing his missing wife everywhere. He’s so sure it’s her; he thinks he’s going mad when the woman who looks, sounds and smells like his wife pretends not to know him. Only the color of her eyes, brown instead of blue, has him questioning his sanity. The insomnia and constant drinking could also be why he’s seeing and hearing things. Feeney dragged on the ‘Is Grady sane or not’ storyline far too long; some good editing could have tightened it up and conveyed the message without the redundancy.

Near the end of the book, Feeney finally comes out with the big reveals:

Grady was the person lying in the lane when Abby went missing. He chloroformed her and attempted to throw her over the edge of the cliff, without looking back to check she actually fell.

The timing of it all doesn’t fit the introduction from chapter one, the fact that both characters are on the phone with each other, Abby would have heard the sound of wind and sea, plus the feedback from the phones being so close to one another. And, sure, Feeney adds that the person lying in the road is wearing a coat; still, it doesn’t change the outline of a male versus female figure to the point of confusing the two. How dumb does Feeney think her readers and listeners are?

Furthermore, we are meant to believe a chloroformed Abby held on to a loose branch and pulled herself back up onto the cliff. Are we in cartoon land here? So not only did Grady not check to make sure his wife went over the cliff, he also didn’t make sure the chloroform took effect? Nothing in this explanation makes sense; it’s maddening.

Kitty, Grady’s agent and Abby’s godmother, reveals that her name is also Abby; thus, the audience now knows that the ‘alternate perspective’ they have been reading or listening to throughout the novel is hers. This technique is confusing, and it is why the characters are unreliable and impossible to connect to.

The island, where all the inhabitants are women wronged by men, decided to band together and cut off the outside world, which generates zero income, is actively losing money and must rely on a resident best-selling male author to support it! It is unrealistic, creative license or not, the storyline must remain believable. This is so far-fetched that it belongs in the same category as rainbow poop coming out of a unicorn’s rear. Abby running away to an island of female man haters to plot her revenge because she now hates her husband, who attempted to kill her, is nonsensical. Calling the police and having him arrested for attempted murder is the logical option here.

Honestly, it would have been easier for Feeney to open the book with both of them lying in bed, Abby whispering their favorite phrase to say I love you: “I hope you die in your sleep,” to Grady, and once he’s softly snoring, for her to smother him with a pillow instead of dragging her audience through all these absurd hoops. Feeney’s book is so outlandish that it doesn’t merit a 1-star rating, zero stars.



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