Author: Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

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.

I wasn’t totally familiar with Alice Feeney’s work previously, but at the bookstore it seems like she does have quite the selection. Anyway, glad to have picked this up, although ultimately it wasn’t the kind of book for me.

Beautiful Ugly mostly takes place on a tiny (isolated) Scottish island, where our protagonist, Grady, goes to try to finally write a book to get his life back on track. His wife Abby had disappeared over a year ago one night, mysteriously, and Grady had not recovered since. The island seems to be a peaceful idyllic getaway, far from distractions of modern London life. However, Grady, who has slowly been descending into madness, seems to see his missing wife everywhere he goes. And mysterious messages appear, targeted just at him, the lone visitor on the island. Just what happened to his wife that fateful night?