Beautiful Ugly

 

Author Grady Green has just gotten the biggest news of his life: his new novel is a New York Times bestseller. The very same night his wife Abby mysteriously goes missing while driving home. Still devastated and aimless a year later and unable to write, his agent Kitty - Abby's godmother - suggests he go to a quiet, idyllic island off the coast of Scotland to see if that will help inspire him to write again.

Welcome to the Isle of Amberley - a place so perfectly defined by the title of this book and one that might be giving me nightmares for the next few days! One friend described it and its residents as giving Stepford Wives vibes, and I'd absolutely agree with that, but for me it also had shades of the 70's folk horror movie The Wicker Man, ironically also set on a Scottish island. 

The constantly changing weather, the folklore, the ferry that mysteriously never seems to have an outgoing schedule, the pounding sea, the towering trees and forest, the residents whose smiles belie their suspicious stares and the writing cabin atop a cliff's edge once inhabited by another male author, now deceased, all inundated my senses with an undercurrent of foreboding from the moment Grady steps onto the island. 

From the get-go you know something isn't right, and the unease stuck with me through every moment of my listen, narrated expertly by the wonderful Richard Armitage, with a few chapters by Tuppence Middleton.  The sound effects of the waves crashing, voices calling out, the crackle of walkie-talkies and increasingly ominous occurrences built the sense of dread so perfectly that I would almost classify this as lite psychological horror. 

Grady is the perfect unreliable narrator, as you lose all sense of whether he's seeing and hearing things or if it's real, which only increases as his insomnia and drinking affect his perception. The residents of Amberley were written so well that I almost felt like I was in Grady's shoes, which was quite an unpleasant and claustrophobic place to be!

Alice Feeney has officially scared the bejeebers out of me with this one. She nailed the atmosphere and characters so well, and I could visualize the whole story so vividly in my mind like a movie. The denouement lost a little bit of its zing for me with an arrangement I couldn't quite buy into, but the big twist preceding it and the foreshadowing for the ending were so delicious! 

Feeney has written an excellent book and I highly recommend it to those who like a pervasively creepy, ominous, psychological suspense story that creatively examines the power dynamic between men and women.

★★★★ ½ (rounded to 4)

Thanks to Macmillan Audio, NetGalley and author Alice Feeney for the ALC to honestly review. It's out on January 14, 2025.