Customer Reviews

Beautiful

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

i am 14 yrs old and a freshman, this book is deep and gave me a whole different perspective on other 13-14 year olds, i normally read about rich girls with glamorous lives. but this was different, it had meaning. i recommend to anyone who wants to read a good book!

Beautiful is one of those book you expect to be good from the start. The cover draws you in first, then the summary, and when you start it, the first chapter alone makes you want more.

While I can't relate to a lot of what happened in the book, as I am extremely straight-edge, I could relate to Cassie and I think a lot of other girls will also be able to. All of us have to deal with feelings we can't control, peer pressure, crushes, and wanting to fit in, among all of the other things Cassie has to deal with and that makes Beautiful more realistic for teens who find Cassie's world foreign.

As much as I loved Cassie and the plot, I would've loved to see some of the minor characters developed more because I kept confusing some of them and I also would've liked to have seen more added onto the ending, though that's partly because I didn't want to see the book end.

Overall, I completely recommend this but only for older/mature teens, due to the content. (I also think fans of Stephanie Kuehnert's books would enjoy this.)

Beautiful was an interesting change from what I've been reading lately. The last few books I've read- The Hollow, Hush Hush...- have all been fantasy. Beautiful was a real book about what could be a real person. Cassie kind of reminded me of Christina in Crank by Ellen Hopkins at first. She had good grades, friends, and a family, but other than that, this book was completely different than Crank or any other book I've read about someone dealing with drugs. From the girl on the cover I assumed Cassie was in high school or older, not the case. Cassie was only thirteen. She was dragged into the drug world by another girl- one who was equally friendless. Alex hung out with high school age kids, went to wild parties, did drugs, drank, smoked, and never thought twice about doing anything. Cassie, shy, friendless, lonely, and new to the school was tempted to join Alex' excited world, where boys called her "beautiful" and everyone wanted to be her friend. I liked how this book was in first person so I could really see when Cassie began to change and read all her feelings about everything. Beautiful was detailed and original and thoroughly described the life of a girl like Cassie.

One thing I didn't really like about this book was that Cassie changed too fast. One minute she was shy and studious, the next she's off partying with people way older than she and doing drugs like she always has. Cassie goes from barely even talking to boys to having sex all the time. Maybe this was too show how when you're taking drugs and drinking your life can get out of your hands, but sometimes I felt like it was a little unrealistic. All in all this was a book that I'm really glad I read. It was informative, sad, scary, and everything in between. Cassie's story was from the heart and you wanted to help her, but could do nothing. The reader is like a by stander watching Cassie from behind a glass wall, unable to help. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under thirteen. There was bad language, sex, drinking, drugs, etc. This is a book you'll definitely want to pick up if you're a fan of Ellen Hopkins work or books like Go Ask Alice. The cover is another great feature of the book- I love the lipstick writing of the title.

Rating;

Plot: 9/10

Characters: 9/10

Ending: 8/10

Enjoyment: 9/10 (It's not that I enjoyed it, I mean can you really enjoy a book about someone taking drugs? It was just well written with an important message, etc.)

Cover: 10/10

___

Overall: 45/50= 90%

I saw the review by Ellen Hopkins on the cover, and, as a fan of her books, I wanted to check it out. It really wasn't great. The characters were unrealistic, static, and predictable. As a teen myself I hoped for some characters I could relate to or at least understand. Instead relationships (both the friendship with Alex and Cassie and Cassie's boyfriends) happened way too fast to be natural. I felt that the writing style was meant for younger children but the actual story for young adults. There was nothing original. Small town girl moves to a big city, teenage/young girl starts having sex and doing drugs - nothing new, everything recycled. I realize this is Reed's first book, but as I was reading it I was wondering why it was published.

"Beautiful" is a spare, disturbing, haunting portrait of the very real angst of a young teen to belong somewhere, anywhere, especially when her family is powerless to help or raise her. The characters in this book come from negligent and abusive families and turn to themselves and each other for guidance; not surprisingly, they can't do it. The pain in their lives is palpable. Cassie's experiences are gut-wrenching, but they result in a tentative attempt at redemption and at being a more authentic self.

Cassie moves from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. She decides that she need to leave her good girl persona behind. She chooses some dangerous friends and is immersed into the world of drug, sex, and secrets. Cassie loves the thrill of her new life, but she also terrified of what could happen. She loses her virginity to a older boy. Cassie also embraces the numbness of drugs. Now she is being called beautiful. Cassie doesn't notice the down spiral that her life is going on and how much danger she is really in.
Cassie is an interesting character. She wants to fit in like most teens do, but she chooses the wrong crowd and had to live with consequences. I am going to admit that I didn't like the ending of what happens to Cassie, because it shows teens that they have the ability to give up, instead of working yourself out of the mess of your own creation. Beautiful was a fast paced book that had a lot of emotion. Also, the plot was well done and interesting. The only flaw that I saw was how she just stopped talking to her friends that lived in Bainbridge Island, it is a 45 minute ferry ride. I have had friends move to Seattle and they still come back and hang out. I also have visited them. I live farther away, then that. I found that not be realistic. It was a fairly original book, about what can happen when you get into drugs so young. It was as sad as the true stories are. Reed is an amazing writer and I am excited for more books from her. She created great characters and the setting to let the story unfold. I recommend that you check out this book, if you liked Crank or the movie Thirteen.

I have to say that right from the beginning I couldn't put the book down. I started it before work and had to finish it after, and it had captured me so much that I found it hard to not think about it while I was working. So, props to the author for that.
...But I also have to say that with how consuming it was it was I expecting a better ending. I was supremely disappointed with how it all just came to a head, there were no consequences for her because she just moved away again, as soon as she moved she was clean and goody-goody again (which I find hard to believe would be so easy when after she became a druggie all she wanted to do was smoke pot and cigarettes), and she never really comes to terms or has any qualms with her first sexual relationship.
And I don't feel like there was enough character development for anyone in the book.
So that's it. But it was still good to find a book that truely engrossed me from the beginning. And the story was still worth reading.

I'm sad to say that this book was a bit of a fail for me. I really tried to like it I really did, but it was disturbing, and a bit unlikely, that a little seventh grade girl who used to be so set on being a good girl suddenly decides to be the worst of the worst. Now, I am not saying that this doesn't happen, which I am sure it does, it just happened too fast in my personal opinion. The other aspect that bothered me was that after everything was done and said, she still managed to go to a new school, and as it seems, just turn everything around. It seems that everyone else but her suffered the consequences. I would recommend the book, because I am not going to lie, it was entertaining. I'm just rating it so low due to the lack of realism and the lack of any real lesson taught in the story.

OMG! i don't know what to say about Beautiful, I mean Cassie is 13 years old and living a life on the edge.Beautiful is raw and eye opening. It all comes down to choices and how you want to be, one decision can change everything.

Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every decision she makes or doesn't make cuts you open. All you want is for it to stop, for Cassie to stop. Then you just want to shake her and be like "What are you doing?".With all ...more OMG! i don't know what to say about Beautiful, I mean Cassie is 13 years old and living a life on the edge.Beautiful is raw and eye opening. It all comes down to choices and how you want to be, one decision can change everything.

Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every decision she makes or doesn't make cuts you open. All you want is for it to stop, for Cassie to stop. Then you just want to shake her and be like "What are you doing?".With all these raw emotions, the novel is almost like a memoir. Like you are Cassie, being regretted and lost.Your waiting for that BIG crash and burn. Your hoping for it to turn around, and maybe it does..... Cassie just has to find herself in the ashes.

Overall Beautiful is a powerful novel. I know i'm obsessed with the darker sides of life, i really don't know why, i like the intensity and edge. That's why i like Ellen Hopkins too. If your a Ellen Hopkins fan you should DEFINITELY read Beautiful.

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.