Beautiful Ugly
by Alice Feeney
Publisher’s Summary:
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the 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.
Audio Book Review:
The audio production is wonderful! Richard Armitage proves that a deep-tone male actor can do justice to female perspectives. Unfortunately, some make women’s voices shrill, high-pitched, whiny, and nothing short of shrieking. Armitage was absolutely perfect.
Tuppence Middleton voices one of the female characters and is equally as splendid. It was an interesting choice to have her voice at all since there are many female characters whose dialog comes from Armitage. Both have soothing voices that lend themselves well to a story with so many layers.
I knocked off a star because of major plot devices. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say that a character using a “new name/identity” is easy to explain away everything. It’s a lot like “cell phone died/doesn’t work” which Feeney also incorporated throughout. There’s also a great deal of hallucinations which should confuse the character but not the reader.
This was riveting and full of surprises that come out at the end. The end was kind of old fashioned and Agatha Christie style in how everyone is gathered round to give the conclusion. The minute details are at least done one-on-one between main character, Grady Green, and the two closest people in his life.
The dog is fine.
Rating: 4 stars
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.