| Title | : | Beautiful |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1416978305 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781416978305 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 232 |
| Publication | : | Published October 6, 2009 |
Stepping into her new identity turns out to be easier than Cassie could have ever imagined… one moment, one choice, changes everything.
Cassie’s new existence both thrills and terrifies her. Swept into a world of illicit parties and social landmines, she sheds her virginity, embraces the numbness she feels from the drugs, and floats through it all, knowing that she is now called beautiful. She ignores the dangers of her fast-paced life… but she can’t sidestep the secrets and the cruelty.
Cassie is trapped in a swift downward spiral tinged with violence and abuse, and no one—not even the one person she thought she could trust—can help her now.
Beautiful Reviews
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To everyone who says this isn't realistic--I wish you were right. I really do.
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What? Are you guys kidding me? Was I reading a different book from everyone else? Because I can't imagine what could possibly earn this piece of trash a four- or five-star review.
I mean, I thought people were done writing things like this. It's so formulaic that it's laughable. An absentee father, a depressed alcoholic mother, a shy, ugly teenager who somehow gets reborn into a beautiful swan (although we never do learn how Cassie got that new face and body everyone keeps talking about) and sets off on a path of destruction to make herself forget about her past and to become 'cool'.
There isn't a single likeable character in this book, except perhaps poor Sarah, the plot device who leads to Cassie's eventual redemption. Everyone is a cardboard cutout, Cassie herself most of all. She's weak and spineless and her motivation is unclear. It's clear that she hates her new friends, hates having sex with her boyfriend, hates what the drugs have done to her, and yet she keeps on doing the drugs and keeps on hanging out with the people that she hates. And endlessly waxes poetic about how she wants to destroy them all.
This 'novel' barely skims the surface of teenage rebellion, addiction, a person's spiraling out of control. I recommend you actually read
Go Ask Alice or Catcher in the Rye if you want to read about some teen's angsting. This one's a waste of time. -
This book was so awful that I'm thinking about changing my Twilight reviews to be one star higher.
Has their ever been a protagonist as unlikeable as Cassie? The whole novel is unbelievable. Cassie is a nice, sweet girl, that moves to a new school and has the chance to be popular. In a matter of days she is doing drugs, has casual sex, and drinks. At 13. Not likely.
Also, I realize that her parents are pretty uninvolved in her, but really? If she smoked pot as much as she said she did, there is no WAY her parent's would not have figured it out.
The only good thing about this book is that it was short, and I read it in an hour and a half.
However, I do not see the appeal of this book at all. There are no good characters. No one you want to latch on and root for. Except perhaps Sarah.
This book will appeal to some. Those that love gritty, contemporary fiction and don't mind suspending disbelief will probably find something in this book that speaks to them. -
All right, so just to be clear: Beautiful by Amy Reed is not appropriate for all age groups. Come to think of it, the life of the modern American teenager is not appropriate for all age groups. Both it and this book contain lots of sex, including some incest, drug abuse, alcohol, suicide, violence, all manner of foul language, and many other adult elements I usually don’t get to write about here. I’m not too worried as I know most of you Esteemed Readers are adults, but if you are under the age of thirteen (at least) please check with an adult before reading this book or even this review.
Okay, everyone left I’ll assume is comfortable with an adult discussion of a fantastic book for teenagers and former teenagers. If you’re not squeamish, Amy Reed has written a knock out novel you ought to read, especially if you are writing YA yourself. Reed's prose is stunning and haunting. I usually highlight sections of prose to share with you, but that hasn’t done me much good this week because I ended up highlighting something from just almost every page. Those markings don’t do me any favors when the whole book is highlighted! But that’s Amy Reed’s fault. Her writing really is that beautiful (yuk, yuk, sigh, rolls eyes), and I will be rereading Beautiful later for further study.
Some readers will not like this book at all and I suspect some will hate it. That’s true of any book worth reading, but Reed has designed this book to be offensive. I love that in a work of fiction. Beautiful is meant to upset and disturb the reader. That is its purpose and frankly, I think readers need to be disturbed now and again. You will be thinking about thirteen-year-old Cassie and her “friends” long after you’ve finished this book. If it’s been awhile since you were in high school, you may find yourself looking differently at teenagers you know. If you’re in high school, I think you’ll be delighted to find that here is a writer brave enough to depict what being a teenager in the modern world of drug riddled and broken families is actually like.
There is a dangerous myth in America about high school. I call it the myth of the American teenager and I’ve written about it before in my review of Cracked Up To Be. It comes from too many wholesome television programs, I think, this notion that teenagers are often bright, happy kids, only occasionally rambunctious, like that group from Happy Days or Saved By the Bell (showing my age, I know). Being a teenager is not so bad, think too many adults, but having been one not so very long ago, I beg to disagree. In my own fiction, I write about characters up to the age of twelve, or I skip to adulthood. I did not like high school and I don't like revisiting it even in fiction. I would not repeat it and I find our culture’s obsession with youth to be silly. Who in their right mind would want to be a teenager?
The transition from the world of the child filled with bright colors to the world of the adult, filled with harsh realities is rough. Adults are liars. Children learn this with age and especially bright children like Cassie take it hard. We learn in adolescence that things aren’t the way we first believed them, made worse by the fact that we’ve been sheltered and some adults try to shelter us still, even though we’ve glimpsed behind the curtain. As a child, we learn the police officer is a nice man who is here to help. As a teenager, we might learn the officer can also sometimes be a bully. Adults aren’t always the nice, well intentioned folks we imagined them to be and our heroes, our parents have feet of clay.
I don’t want to belabor this point, but for me this is the most significant factor of the teenage mindset and its one that Reed nails in Beautiful. An adult knows that so and so is an alcoholic and verbally abusive, but has the maturity to recognize that so and so also takes care of their family and makes a valuable contribution to the world. We split the difference and rationalize because we recognize the necessity of so and so and we know we have our own shortcomings. We also know that there are many unpleasant things in the world, but have learned to assimilate them into our experience and to focus on the more positive aspects of life.
But this maturity of thought comes with age. To a child, the world is often black and white, and being an adolescent teaches that child to think in shades of grey. And it doesn’t come easy. Often, a teenager will feel betrayed by the world. Teenagers focus on the morbid, which confounds parents, but that’s because they’ve already assimilated their thoughts. To the teenager, corruption is new and everywhere and offensive and the whole world is just ignoring it.
As I read Beautiful, I occasionally thought that Cassie was being just a little melodramatic, but then I realized she was just being thirteen. Reed absolutely channels teen angst. Beautiful is written in the first person and Cassie’s perspective of the world is the reason for reading this book. If you’re an adult trying to understand how your teen thinks, read this book. It should help clear things up. For example, here is Cassie’s description of Christmas:
I am looking around, but all I see are white, smiling faces and multicolored scarves, all these people with something to look forward to, all of them with faith that tomorrow morning will bring something new. They will wake up and find their glittering boxes under their trees, full of all the things they had to have. They will open the boxes and their lives will be complete for that moment. Then there will be food and eggnog and a heavy night of sleep. Then New Year’s Eve and empty promises, hangovers, and football. Then it will be back to work, back to school, back to everything exactly the same as it was before. The only difference will be the new date. The only difference will be the new sweaters, new jewelry, new scarves that they will stop wanting as soon as they get them…
…A young family with a baby is fighting next to a truck. The wife is red-faced and crying as she holds the baby dressed like a little elf. For some reason, I suddenly feel like crying. That baby has no idea it’s wearing a stupid pointy green hat. He has no idea his mother and father hate each other. He doesn’t know there’s nothing he can do about any of it.
It’s cheery stuff, no? But at thirteen, I knew exactly what Cassie meant. I see that we’re already running long, and I haven’t even told you about the book yet. Well, we’ll just have to go long this week is all. I wanted to spend some time on point of view, because this is a story that is all about voice. Everything that happens in Beautiful stems from Cassie’s perspective of the world. She’s a dark character with a head full of dark thoughts. Is it any wonder then that dark things follow?
The plot of Beautiful is thus: Thirteen-year-old Cassie and her family have just moved to Seattle and is determined to change her identity to someone more exciting, sort of like Linus Tuttle from last week’s Mamba Point. Linus talked to black mambas to change his identity. Cassie slaps on some bad girl makeup, loses her virginity, and does a bunch of drugs (I miss middle grade). She falls in with the bad crowd, the really bad crowd, especially her new insane best friend, Alex. Alex will terrify parents. She is the worst possible friend for Cassie and she helps her (or forces her to) discover drugs. Cassie gets deep into drugs fast, her life spirals out of control, and she does plenty of naughty things that will further horrify parents. Really, if I gave an award for scariest book for parents of a teenage girl to read, I would give it to Beautiful. I’m not going to tell you what happens to Cassie, but you can imagine it’s nothing good.
The story of Beautiful is very much character driven. You will love, hate, pity, and empathize with Cassie and all of the supporting characters, even psycho Alex. The plot never feels intrusive and Reed’s writing is so mesmerizing I found I was helpless to do anything but keep reading, even as Cassie’s story depressed me. And there is a point to it all. Cassie’s viewpoint, though jaded, is one it will likely benefit you to consider. I never agreed with her, but I saw her point.
Some readers will be repulsed by Beautiful, and as I said, I think that’s a good thing. Cassie’s story is repulsive. It’s also rather common. Some will wonder if it’s appropriate for teens to read this book. Bear in mind, I’m not a father, but I would say it depends on the teen. I think this would be a very good read for some thirteen-year-olds, and others would be much happier with Twilight (although talk about a twisted relationship!). However, if a teenager resides in a school with a class of five hundred or greater, odds are good there is nothing in Beautiful that will surprise him or her.
Let’s talk about drugs. There’s a phrase I never thought I’d use on this blog. We can wage all the war on them all we want and they’re not going away. Understand, I despise drugs. I’ve seen them destroy the lives of people I cared about. Sure, occasionally someone does a bunch of drugs and then writes The Shining, but more often the drug abuser wrecks their life and harms their family. And those drugs are in our high schools.
I grew up in small town Indiana, not Indianapolis, and we had plenty of drugs. I knew a fourteen-year-old girl with a serious coke habit, three kids killed themselves over drugs before I graduated, and I heard of much worse things in the teacher’s lounge when I substitute taught. All the hating and denouncing of drugs in the world isn’t likely to make them go away. They were there when my parents went to school and I expect they’ll be there in some form when my own children are in school.
The solution to the problem of teenagers and drugs is not to ignore it. Reed knows this, which is, I assume, part of the reason she has written such a frank and open book about teens and drugs. Reed tells it like it is, though to be honest I’ve never been hooked on drugs, so I can’t speak with a whole lot of authority. Beautiful doesn’t condescend and Reed doesn’t preach. She tells her story honestly and in a way teens will relate to. And she establishes authorial authority by being honest about the positive aspects of drugs, and there must be some or people wouldn’t do them:
There is a buzzing inside me as I look around the room. I am surrounded by beautiful people and white light, sparkling, the texture of cellophane. It cuts through the mattress, the floor, the table, Alex, Wes, and all these people I don’t know. But it is soft. It is like dewdrops, like a ball of liquid mirrors, reflecting all the light on me. I am shining, squeaky clean, sparkling. I gulp down my cheap, warm beer and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever tasted. I take a drag from my cigarette and feel the smoke lift me. I stand up, float out of the room, and enter the noise outside… I am part of this thing that is huge. I belong here. It would not be the same without me.
Because Reed tells the truth about Cassie’s enjoyment of drugs, the reader will believe her later when she tells about the consequences of her actions. The teen reader who accompanies Cassie will be able to recognize a bad scene and will be able to experience the catharsis that comes with watching a protagonist reap the whirlwind:
The spinning comes back and I puke behind a dumpster. I stay there for a while. I think about not leaving. I think about freezing to death behind this dumpster in a miniskirt and high heels. I wonder who would find me. I wonder if I would be dead or just barely alive, if I would end up in a hospital bed or a cemetery. I imagine my parents frantic, mourning me, my mother weeping, my father swearing silently to himself. I imagine them blaming themselves, and this thought makes me warmer.
Okay, this review is insanely long, so I’m about to sign off. But before I do, I just want to make sure I mention that there is a theme throughout Beautiful of terrible, or at least, flawed parents. Watch for it. There is a reason these teenagers are so depressed and eager to lose themselves in drugs and good on Amy Reed for spreading some of the blame where it belongs. I would share some examples, but I’d rather close with a few of my favorite passages from the book. Don’t forget to come back on Thursday to see Amy Reed face the 7 Questions, but for now enjoy some of her fine prose (if you want the uncensored version, you’ll have to buy the book; this is a blog about children’s literature, after all):
This is too easy. It should not be this easy. I should not be able to slip a box of sleeping pills in my back pocket at the grocery store whenever I need to recharge. I should not be able to wake up and feel fine and do it all over again. I should be dying. My stomach should be falling out. My parents should be grounding me. I should be getting arrested. Someone should be trying to stop me.
The fluorescent light reflects off the puke-green walls and makes us look like we’re dead.
This is what he meant by “I want to get to know you better.” This is the “alone time.” This is when we pass a joint back and forth and I let him talk and let him think I am interested in what he’s saying. We are talking about the things you are supposed to talk about before you have sex.
“I love you, too,” I say because it’s the only thing I can think of, because it’s the only thing you’re allowed to say when someone says they love you first. Maybe that’s all love is—one person saying it because they think they’re supposed to and the other person feeling too guilty to say anything else—and everyone’s delusional who believes it’s anything like Shakespeare, because Romeo and Juliet were just crazy and horny and the same ages as me and Ethan. Maybe this is all love is and all it will ever be—boys f***ing girls and pretending it’s love, girls getting f***ed and pretending they like it, saying “I love you, too,” and wanting to throw up.
This is just like a rap video (Cassie is a white girl at a party of mostly black people—MGN), I think, except there are no expensive cars or champagne and everyone’s a little less beautiful. I wonder if I am a racist for thinking that.
To read an interview with author Amy Reed or to read more reviews and author and literary agent interviews, check out my blog:
www.middlegradeninja.blogspot.com -
Before moving to a small town outside of Seattle, Cassie had always been what most people would call a good kid. She had lived on an island called Bainbridge Island and she was invisible, living but not fully. She had fake friends, and did well in school because it was what was expected of her.
For the first week or so at her new school as a seventh grader, it seemed like things were going to be exactly the same as when she went to school in Bainbridge. That all changed though when Alex, the girl in school who had green hair, hung out with older boys, and everyone gave up their place in line for, started to call Cassie her best friend. To Cassie she was powerful and popular, part of her own "in" crowd.
In reality, Alex lived a life full of drugs, partying, and sex; all of which Cassie is soon drug in to. To Cassie though, she is finally part of something and she has an actual friend and there are people who think of her as beautiful. Her life spirals out of control to the point where dropping acid, being continually high on ritalin, not eating for weeks at a time and not sleeping are part of her normal routine.
I found it hard at times to think of Cassie as only a seventh grader. These life experiences she is having are foreign territory for me, and some parts were very hard to read. Amy Reed gives the reader detailed descriptions of what Cassie experiences while using the various drugs and there are also graphic sexual scenes; all of which are again hard to imagine a seventh grader experiencing.
This book is a slap in the face wake up call about teens and some of the things they are faced with when it comes to peer pressure. While I hope that most teens are never in situations like the ones in this book, I think that this book fits into a genre that most teens like reading for curiosity reasons. -
DO NOT BE FOOLED!! I warn you.
This book will draw you in with it's interesting and self destructive characters, it's quick paced writing style, and very messed up narrator, but i will say flat out that the ending is NO WHERE NEAR, NOT IN THIS LIFE TIME, WORTH IT.
I mean Reed just basically makes you read this story about a girl who messes up her life, but she never fixes it. She never wraps anything up, and the stuff she tries to wrap up... oh, she fails at that.
Also, this story is about a thirteen year old girl, but no way in hell should thirteen year old girls read this book. So over the heads of middle schoolers and probably most highschoolers.
I mean i kept reading just waiting for the HOPE to come but it NEVER CAME!! Her life just kept going bad after bad and i wanted to throw up--not figuratively, literally. This book was disgusting. I would not think anything of it except for the fact that there was no real ending. She covers about three months in the last chapter and suddenly starts telling the story like someone else entirely. It was very weird and very odd. Maybe if there was a little more deatail here or there i would have understood better, but really it was just an idea someone had and it was not executed well at all.
Also, anyone ever seen the movie THIRTEEN. If you have, then you've read the book and except the movie version is better. TRUST ME i never lie. -
I was in tears for the whole last section of this book. Reed does an excellent job of re-creating the way a certain time in early adolescence feels for some girls and probably some boys as well--the time when you'd do absolutely anything, be anyone to be noticed and fit in somewhere. And the simple way she portrays Cassie's sudden, surprising friendship with Sarah hits home hard, as well; it reminded me of what it was like to bond so quickly with someone when you find out that they're an alien from the same planet as you, and how good that feels.
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So many things wrong with this book!
First of all... Seventh grade and involved in drugs, sex and other bullshit! Unreal - don't get me wrong I know kids get into things (myself as a kid included) but this progression was all too fast.
Second, for me the cover description lacked a connection to what happened in the book. This bad/abusive relationship she was involved in I think is between Cassie and Alex but Alex didn't really give a shit about her. Alex would leave her wherever and let her leave and not care so I fail to see this as an abusive relationship. I don't see the boyfriend as the abusive relationship and certainly not Sarah.
Third, where did this Uncle Charlie come from?!?! Were we supposed to think there was previous abuse there? I fail to see the significance of introducing this character and so late in the book without drawing a clear line of connection to the other events in the book.
Finally, how can parents be that blind - especially to a seventh grader. How do you not know that they are not coming home or even question things when she calls crying to be picked up in the middle of the night in a town she doesn't know....I mean REALLY!?! -
My mother was a librarian, and sometime in the summer of 1973, she handed me a novel that upset, intrigued, and convinced me so fully, I almost refused to go to middle school. She didn’t really give the novel to me. She shoved it into my hands, insisting that I read it. That book was the novel Go Ask Alice, purportedly based on a teenager’s diary. The story is, as we all know now, a vivid cautionary tale about drugs and their rabbit hole allure.
But really, the most frightening aspect of that novel was that I understood completely why “Alice” wanted to be other, different, new. Her need made sense. It could be me. It would be me if I didn’t watch out.
It took me a few years to get over the reading of that novel, but when I opened to the first page of the novel Beautiful by Amy Reed, I was right back in my young self, reading Go Ask Alice for the first time. From the first pages of Beautiful, I was shouting to myself, “No! Stop. Turn around. You don’t need Alex. Don’t go with Alex. Stop.”
But the main character Cassie has to follow that white rabbit down the hole. This is her journey. This is the hole she has to fall into, taking us with her. And we want to go. Not really. Okay, yes, we do. We have no choice. Her loneliness and despair are ours or could be ours. Reed writes with clarity and a sure knowing of how damn bad that adolescent life can be.
Cassie is the smart, formerly ugly “loser” who wants to change but then changes in a way she never imagined possible. We can only hope that as with the Lewis Carroll Alice, Cassie wakes up, wiser but no worse for wear.
Reed writes with an immediate, first person present tense tsunami of adolescent pain and confusion. Cassie’s story is one we understand but wish we didn’t have to. But because we do understand, we want to follow Cassie all the way through to the truly climactic end.
How easy it is for us to simply move onto a path that is wrong. At age 13, it is even easier, especially if the family system is broken, the child unmoored. Reading Reed’s story might shake up a reader, much as Go Ask Alice did me. But that book and Beautiful are so worth the ride. -
This book sucked. I would never recommend it to anyone, even those who I'd love to see miserable. The main character, Cassie, was 13 and on acid. Seriously? The girl lost her virginity and didn't even care. I kid you not, this was a question she asked her screwed up friend, "Do you have orgasms when you have sex?" Lord help this child.
The plot was slow and there was no point to it.
Me:
Please save yourself and do not pick up this book. -
This is a disturbing story, but one that is all too well known. Girl moves to a new school, parents aren't so functional, girl makes astoundingly bad choices. Through a combination of flawed parents, youthful recklessness, and sociopathic best-friends, Cassie sinks into...exactly the sort of things you expect, none of them pretty, let alone beautiful.
Reed recounts the story with easy-to-read language, in straightforward, first-person narration. Cassie is numb, so there isn't much emotion to the writing, other than a constant, unwavering ache, yet Cassie reads sympathetically. Pulling this off is just one instance of Reed's story telling skill. Her dialogue is sharp, her characters well rendered; she doesn't flinch at painful realities, both common and extreme. Although explicit sex and drug use pepper the story, it never feels exploitative or anything short of honest.
As I re-read and re-write this review, I realize I'm having trouble capturing my affection for the book.
I think Amy Reed may be mining the same vein that sustains
Adam Rapp. Fans of
Ellen Hopkins (who's blurb reads, "stark, disquieting, and quite simply, riveting"),
Laura Wiess,
Living Dead Girl,
Go Ask Alice and the like will connect with "Beautiful," but this is even richer, more nuanced. -
4.5 stars. This is a very powerful read that I wouldn't recommend to younger teens. There is a lot of very graphic language, sex, abuse, and drugs. Cassie is a 13-year old who is starting at a new school. She has no siblings, her mom drinks a lot and generally does nothing, and her dad is very absent. She decides that since she has now blossomed into a beautiful young girl the cool kids will of course accept her. The problem is that the "cool" kids at her new school are also the kids who sleep around, do drugs, and don't care about school. Cassie is smart, but she has been through something that makes her gravitate towards the lifestyle of these so-called cool kids. She starts to do drugs (a lot of them and all different kinds) and she is basically an empty shell of a girl that does the complete opposite of what her heart actually desires to do. She does all this to try to become invisible and dissolve into nothing, which is a big theme in the story. She is constantly referring to her want of emptiness, nothingness and being alone and unseen. It isn't until later that you find out why. I liked that the author didn't spare the details because it was necessary to tell Cassie's story. It is a quick read that readers of Speak, Wintergirls, and Living Dead Girl will enjoy.
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Am I the only one who thought this book was similar to the movie Thirteen, with Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Woods? There was something in it that really reminded me of this movie. After all, Cassie goes from being a good girl, to being a ‘bad” girl, caught in a world of lies, drug, sex, alcohol and abuse.
This is not a light read, that’s for sure. There is something really troubling in reading about a thirteen-years-old going through all Cassie is going through.
The fact that Cassie is only thirteen was really troubling, especially because I have cousins coming to that age. Amy Reed really took the story to the limit; never being shy of really describing what is going on. I wouldn’t recommend this book to a younger audience, as some aspect can be a little explicit for the thirteen-years-old that I know.
For the complete review:
http://abeautifulmadness.net -
I first bought the book because of the wonderful cover but it wasn't my cup of tea. First of Cassie's character had so much potential but it wasn't explored. Most of the story flew right past me and if your a bit slow like I am you wouldn't understand the author's cryptic words. We never knew what was up with Cassie's dad. Alex wasn't well described altough she was one of the books main characters.The only interesting part of the book was Sarah. Altogether it seemed like a failed attempt at copying the plot of Ellen Hopkins books. But that just my opinion.
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Only 4 pages in and already I hated it. I won't even give this book a better chance. Personally, I don't like books where the main character is a seventh-grader with green hair. And where the "hottie" has a mohawk. Just my opinion.
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There is something disturbingly haunting about BEAUTIFUL. Debut novelist Amy Reed writes Cassie’s dark story in a prose that stuns and lingers.
BEAUTIFUL is similar to edgy movies like Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen in terms of content, but it is nearly poetic in its descriptions. Reed’s writing allows Cassie to distance herself from all situations she doesn’t want to be in, while simultaneously letting readers into Cassie’s mindset. The result both characterizes Cassie and effectively draws us into her frightening world.
My main issue with this book was the lack of information we were given on Cassie’s past, which would’ve acted as a comparison to and justification of Cassie’s current behavior. Throughout the book Cassie hints at an unhappy life in her old town—but is she a former good girl rebelling against her past? What is her motivation for falling in with the crowd she does? It is unclear to me what drove her to engage in the lifestyle she does, which made connecting with the story a little difficult.
Even so, BEAUTIFUL is a great read if you can stomach the material. It’s eye-opening, gut-churning, and exquisitely written. -
Rating: 2.75
Beautiful is an interesting little book. It's very gritty and perfect for fans of Ellen Hopkins. I can see readers who love gritty realistic fiction devouring this one. But adults will see the many faults that are in the book. It's also a bit odd because the character is so young, but I don't know how many middle school libraries could really carry it and I don't know if older teens would read about the addictions of a 7th grader. So I don't know who the audience really is. I guess 7th and 8th grade readers who are reading the gritty books allready and can get this one at the public library would be the prime audience.
The story seems to jump around too much without much explanation or back story. One moment Cassie is a good girl and the next she's pulled into Alex's world-there's no explanation how she got there. We know Cassie's family moved for a reason and we're led to believe it's some big secret, but we never find out what. In some ways Cassie's fast descent makes sense, especially given her age, but I wish the author would have described it a bit more. I wanted more development for Cassie and why she was choosing to leave her good girl image behind. And what was it about Alex's crowd that really drew her in? The only explanation the author really gives us is that at her old school Cassie tried being popular and that didn't work and she wants to leave her good girl image behind.
Alex is an interesting character and she's a fantastic villain, but we don't get to know her all that much. She was the person I wanted to know the most about, but she seems to come in and out of the story as needed. I wanted explanation for Alex's behavior and wanted to explore her backstory. I found her more interesting than Cassie, but we get to meet her in the beginning and then we miss out on any interaction with Alex for a good portion of the book until the end.
Same with Alex's half-sister, Sarah. Sarah causes tension between Cassie and Alex because Alex can't share friends and while this creates an interesting dynamic, it's only there when the author remembers to throw it in. There are also issues with Alex and Sarah's home life that as an adult reader really bugged me. Most likely, Sarah would not be placed in the home she's placed in, yet the author overlooks this fact to make an interesting story. When I read this for book club, all of us complained about this fact (we're all adults, but I think teens won't care and instead view it as "adults don't care about us.") I also really hated the adults in this book and they do some awful things that as an adult reader was hard for me to read and understand their actions.
The story is told from Cassie's point of view, which may explain why we get a limited view and never get to know more about Alex, Sarah, or the adults in the story, but I wish we had been given a bit more. I never felt too much sympathy for Cassie and never really cared for her. I didn't think she or the other characters where that fleshed out and I wanted them to be. The story left me wanting more.
I think this is a book that teens of realistic fiction would enjoy, but anyone older than fifteen or sixteen would probably have too many issues with it to really enjoy reading it.
Book Pairings: Crank by Ellen Hopkins, Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks -
I have never been more baffled and confused about a book in my entire life. Don't get me wrong, I did NOT like it at all, but I understand it...kind of. I know stories like this need to be told especially since I know people who have or still do drugs and drink alcohol, but at least they seemed to have motives. I get that Cassie's home is kind of broken and her parents don't really care about her, but she seems to get along with them to the point where they won't abandon her. I think she needs a better excuse.
I absolutely HATE the fact that this book was in first person and present tense. The combination just made it seem like Cassie was going through the motions of everything. What attracted her to Alex and her group? Why didn't she want to hang out with the pink-sweater-wearing Harvard girls? What happened on the island that made her the way she is? I didn't get any of that. For the most part this was an easy read. However, in moments when she described her surroundings, I didn't understand it. But the worst part is that she never really changed and it makes me feel like all she went through was for nothing.
The only character I simpathized with was Sarah. The poor girl was so abused and I really hope that the U.S. government would never force a child from one unsafe environment to another in real life. JUST PUT HER IN A FOSTER HOME!
Alex can be described with every cuss word you can't say on TV. I have never wanted to shank a character so badly in my entire life! And the book never explained what a gang against fat people is. Do those even exist? As for James, I respect the fact that he was upfront with his intentions, but could he at least let the girl choose rather than being so forceful! Ethan was a whole nother story. It's nice that he took the romantic route with Cassie, but he turned from a cool older guy to a stage five clingy Clive real quick. Half of the time I wasn't sure if he was serious when he said he loved her or if he did it because he thought that's what she wanted to hear.
All of the adults in the book need to be slapped. They're stupid, terrible parents, and just all around low life scum that do not need to be interacting with children.
I HATE it, and I won't be reading it again. -
Cassie is a genius in a sea of mediocrity. But it doesn't matter, not her smartness, or her old life or what she truly wants. She becomes involved in the popular crowd at her school and her life instantly falls apart.
She doesn't have a voice and when she dares to use the one she tries so hard to summon, she's instantly shot down by her "best friend" Alex.
Let me tell you something about Alex, and just about every character in this book. They are horrible, the worst kind of people, sociopaths, manipulative, stingy, greedy, the pits really. Except for Sarah. Sarah is Alex's half sister that Cassie finds her self drawn to even though she pities her and fights internally with the need to be nice to her. Cassie's life becomes a rotation of hardcore drugs, alcohol and self abuse. She wants to be needed by someone, yet she doesn't want the attention.
What makes her life so sad is that she's just thirteen years old, yet she's surrounded by people who are living such fast lives that she doesn't see fault in what she's doing because she wants to be liked. It's clear before Cassie starts destroying herself that there is some underlying problems. Was she molested when she was younger? Was she bullied in her other school? The book never really says but in her head where everything is vivid and outrageous, she's honest with her self. On the outside she feeds everyone the lies she knows they wish to hear. She hates the crowd she hangs with yet she sucks it up all in the name of being the beautiful seventh grader. there are no back-stories in the book so you have to wonder about some of the things you are reading. Like why Alex's home life is so bizarre, why did Cassie move in the first place, and why does her parents hate each other?
This is basically the book form of the film Thirteen. A very interesting movie about a girl much like Cassie who gets involved with the wrong crowd at a young age. -
Although the book is classified as Young Adult fiction, anyone who has ever been a young adult can enjoy it. The toxic friendship between Cassie and Alex is something most girls have known all too well at some point in their lives and seeing it here on the page is both riveting and therapeutic. The author is just as adept at describing the more fulfilling, life-changing best friendship between Cassie and Sarah, that instant connection that feels almost like falling in love. Reed does such a wonderful job of painting a picture and letting us feel what Cassie's feeling.
There's a tendency to compare Beautiful to Go Ask Alice, but I think that oversimplifies what is going on in this book. While Go Ask Alice is alarmist anti-drug fiction, Beautiful presents the experiences of its protagonist using the language and emotions that all teenagers (or former teenagers) can relate to. It's the emotional experience that matters, and whether a teenager has tried drugs or not, experimented with bad sex or not, he or she can understand what it's like to feel isolated, to worry about saying the wrong thing, to fear that toxic friend who seems too powerful to challenge, to want to fit in no matter what. These are the things that make the story so easy to relate to, and this is why Beautiful is a much more useful story to discourage kids from making bad decisions--if that's what you're after. Mostly, though, the book is a beautifully-written story that we can all relate to, because we've all been there in one way or another. -
I don't always need a happily-ever-after at an end of every book. I also don't live in some fairytale bubble, where I only read fluffy-sappy-love-stories. With that being said, I'm really conflicted about this book. On the one hand, I didn't really care for this story at all. Part of me thinks, I may have missed some over arching context, like it went over my head or something... Then, there is the other side of my brain that is shouting that this book was tragically brilliant.
I think that anyone could relate to Cassie and some aspect of this book. Like Cassie, we were all just trying to figure out who we were and where we fit in growing up. Experimenting with drugs and alcohol, seems like some teenage rite of passage or something like that. Or maybe, we all were just trying to hide from ourselves in some way and we each dealt with our dramatic teenage years differently...
So, how do I rate this book? Hum... My first instinct is to give it a low rating, just because I didn't love this book or connect with the characters overall. But here is the thing, emotionally I had a reaction to this book (good or bad). I can't ignore the fact that this book brought out some strong-thoughtful-feelings in me and that makes this a great book in my opinion (a contradiction, maybe)...
I think I will compromise on the rating. -
So there wasn't any kind of story or plot here.
Cassie was a chubby nerd at her old school, so she decided to be a hot drug addict who lets guys do whatever they want to her at her new school. Where at the end of the book she again is at a new school and decides to reinvent herself, yet again.
Is there suppose to be at least some kind of lesson here? I guess in a way, but to me it just seems like a girl who keeps running away and creating problems for herself.
There is no real reason why Cassie decides to start using drugs other than she wants to be popular. There's not really a reason either why she decides to let her "boyfriend" keep having sex with her even though she absolutely hates it. The only thing that seemed to break her was her uncle trying to hit on her. After she finally decides to start thinking for herself she finds out Sarah killed herself, (which I think Alex totally made her do it) which end in a total break down making her switch schools on top of all the rumors and bullying that Alex caused because Cassie told her she wasn't running away to Portland with her. This all happened in the last 20 or so pages. So the whole book was Cassie taking drugs and getting screwed by her boyfriend with no obvious story line.
It also made me sick reading about gross odors and pimples continuously.
This book made me so mad. Especially Cassie's mom. -
This is one of those books that at first don't grab you from the beginning, but once they do, they pull you so hard it makes you shake!
This was the case for Amy Reed's debut, Beautiful.
Cassie is a thirteen year old girl who gets involved in a group of kids who take drugs and party too much. She sheds her virginity, embraces the numbness she feels from the drugs, and floats through it all, knowing that she is now called beautiful. She ignores the dangers of her fast-paced life . . . but she can’t sidestep the secrets and the cruelty.
With a personal and realistic prose, Beautiful made me hope that Cassie was going to recover, almost as if she knew she was being read and wanted that help so much.
Some compared it to Go Ask Alice, but in my opinion, this is more gritty.
And that ending. Gosh, that ending. It hit me right on my heart because it was so unexpected.
Definitely good for discussion. -
I'm not usually a fan of the gritty "troubled teen" genre, but holy cow Amy Reed sucks you right into the life and mind of 13-year-old Cassie. And while I couldn't personally identify with the character and the situations she gets herself into, I couldn't help but feel a fatherly ache for the pain and numbness she puts herself through. In fact there were two very specific scenes involving Cassie's emotionally absent father that I actually felt myself choke up... which again, doesn't usually happen for me while reading. All I could keep picturing was my precious little girl, who will be 13 in a mere, uh, seven years, as Cassie and I wanted nothing more than to hug her and tell her everything will be fine that she doesn't have to be like this. Amazingly powerful debut novel.
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Wonderfully well-written, thougth provoking, raw and real. It threw me off at first that she was 13/in 7th grade. But then, I realized that while I would have written her older, the fact is, 13 year olds DO face these problems and take these actions, and once I settled into the story, I realized that the author made the right choice.
I loved that both the mom and the dad were never 100% villains, neither were they perfect. The moment where she calls her dad from the pay phone, I think, was one of those moments that just made the book real.
Well Done, Ms. Reed. I look forward to your next book! -
I was totally captivated by this book and compelled to read it straight through in one day. It was kind of like watching a beautiful, horrifying movie, the way the whole thing played out without you being able to stop it. However, I was aware that as young adult fiction it wasn't necessarily written for me, and that I have no idea what the genre, or teenagers themselves, are like these days. I'd be interested in hearing/reading reviews from teachers and librarians.
Read an author interview here:
http://harmonybookreviews.wordpress.c...
