Book: Beautiful by Amy Reed

Published by Simon Pulse

Purchased for my Nook (240 pages)

Genre: YA: Contemporary

Find out more: Goodreads~Barnes And Noble~Amazon~Amy Reed

Goodreads Summary: When Cassie moves from the tiny town where she has always lived to a suburb of Seattle, she is determined to leave her boring, good-girl existence behind. This is Cassie’s chance to stop being invisible and become the kind of girl who’s worth noticing.

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 is an interesting book.  I wasn’t expecting it to be about a good girl gone bad- which is what I get for not reading the summary- and the title doesn’t quite match the plot.  Not that titles and actual content need to match up.

For a lot of the book, I was reminded of the movie 13- the one with Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood.

It was a little hard to see Cassie’s descent into drugs and sex.  I don’t think it’s meant to be easy, and in all reality, there are a lot of girls like Cassie.  I definitely understand what it’s like to want to be not invisible.  And wanting to fit in.

The writing was interesting- not quite stream-of-consciousness but almost.  And that worked really well, because it felt like I was right there with Cassie.

The ending bothered me- she ends up moving away, and there is this weird gap where she’s no longer friends with Alex because of death threats and Cassie moving away.  You get a general idea of what happened, but given the fall she took, things seemed to wrap up a little too nicely.  Plus, her parents seemed to be utterly clueless as to what was going on.  It wasn’t a big surprise, from what we see of them.

I think I would have to give it a 3 out of 5.  It is an interesting book, but I don’t think Cassie fell hard enough.