There are some stories that just help you pass the time away, and there are some that you get mildly sucked into and then there are some stories that take your breath away. Something Beautiful took my breath away.

It focuses on the lifelong friendship of Cordelia and Declan. They are destined to be together. However, life makes things difficult for them. Declan deals with his sexual fluidity, Cordelia deals with her mental health. Even though life throws spanners into their lives the one constant that they have is each other. Something Beautiful is the story of two people who need each other. And it is stunning.

The non-linear multi-perspective narrative keeps the reader on their toes and heightens the tension throughout. Something Beautiful is, at times, un-put-down-able.

This is definitely one book I will be recommending to my friends.

Something Beautiful by Amanda Gernentz Hanson is available now.

For more information regarding Amanda Gernentz Hanson (@amandamaregh) please visit www.amandagernentzhanson.com.

For more information regarding Pen Name Publishing (@PenNamePublishing) please visit www.pennamepublishing.com/home.

Thank you for allowing me to try this novel, but ultimately, it was not for me, so I was not able to finish it.

There were a lot of things that I loved about this book. I loved that mental illness was portrayed accurately. I love that in the hospital Declan talked to Cordelia's parents about how he thought he could fix or take care of her and the realization that she needed extra help. I love that she was medicated and that nobody thought badly of her for it. The portrayal of the fluidity of sexuality was also phenomenal. I loved the 'tiers of attraction' explanation and I love that Declan and Cordelia's relationship changed over time as they grew to know themselves better.

I didn't like the ending. I know that it allowed Declan to be with Peter but it didn't feel right to me. Adam already died and making Cord die too just felt like too much. I could have rolled with a lot of endings--with Cordelia, Declan, and Peter getting into a poly relationship, with Declan and Cordelia unable to have another child but taking one in, I was sort of hoping that Cord and Dec would in some way make life better for LGBT and/or mentally ill teens--starting a charity, helping open a home for homeless LGBT youth, even something related to Cord's mental illness struggles, maybe addressing how they handled it in adulthood and with her as a mom. I think that they deserve their happy ending. I know life is complicated but the fact that Dec, Cord, and their family got to grow and change and learn would have been enough for me.

Other notes: the back-and-forth was an interesting take and I'm not sure how I felt about it. Sometimes it was good, getting those looks here and there, other times it felt jumpy or rushed.

Trigger warnings: self-harm, depression, suicide attempt, shooting, death.

Okay, I have conflicted feelings about this book. I was super excited when I was approved for this arc, and the blurb was so interesting. So maybe that was my mistake, creating too much expectations.

The book follows two best friends Cordelia and Declan, they both have issues of their own to sort through and are just learning who they are in life and how to navigate through it. So first they're best friends, then they're boyfriend and girlfriend, then they go back to best friends, then they get married. Yeah, that kinda felt like all over the place, but let's get more into it.

We have our characters, who have been best friends since they were three years old, suddenly Cordelia's father gets a job in England and they have to move away temporarily. When she comes back, she's not herself anymore, she's been depressed and harming herself. After telling Declan about this, he asks her out, which to me seems like a horrible idea, but okay, she says "I just... don't even love me. How can I promise to love you?" and I was almost slow-clapping but then in the next page they decide to date anyway so there's that.

Everything is fine for a few years, until Declan stars questioning his sexuality, he then breaks up with Cordelia and explains to her that he's gay. That unleashes her depression again, since it was never really dealt with, and she attempts suicide. After that, it's brushed over her recovery, and we only know bits and pieces. Then flash-forward a year later and she has a new boyfriend and she even picks the same university he studies at to be closer to him. Declan gets protective, but that's it, he moves to New York and she goes to California. They're still best friends though.

Flash-forward again a few years and she finds out she's pregnant with her boyfriend's baby, but on his way to the doctors appointment he's in a car crash and dies later on. When Declan comes to California to support his friend, in first day back he kisses her again and confuses her further with the whole situation because to her he was gay, and to him he didn't understand what was happening but he knew he was in love with her.
Okay, quick recap: she's recently found out she's pregnant, her boyfriend died, her best friend is once again in love with her after breaking up with her for being gay. Yes, that's what we have so far.

They decide that Declan will move and help her through this situation, so he drops out of college and gets a job to help support her. They talk more about his sexuality and he tries to explain to her the best he can that not everything is black and white, that sometimes you have a genre preference but that doesn't mean you can't be attracted to another. He isn't happy with his life though, so she tells him to go back to New York and follow his dreams. Their relationship is long distance for a few years, and here's where they start facing their issues; she can't fully comprehend him and it's afraid he'll realize she's not what he wants again, she's also still trying to move on from her deceased boyfriend, he's battling with the long distance and how to help her see that he's madly in love with her.

After a particularly bad fight about said issues, he cheats on her with Peter the guy from the bar, then immediately feels guilty and goes to see her. They talk it out and apparently fix all of their problems. They sleep together and she gets pregnant. Everything is perfect until flash-forward a couple of years again and they're at a rally, where someone shoots her and she passes away.

Now look, I wouldn't be too frustrated if that's how it ended, but the night Cordelia dies, Declan asks Peter - one night stand, turned best friend - to stay with him "She just died, Declan. Don't you think it would be a bad idea for me to stay?" how the fuck did they jump to that again after years of being supposedly only best friends? she literally had just died! It felt like he was just waiting for something to happen to finally have what he wants, that being Peter. It made their love - Cordelia and Declan - cheap and I was just done with the whole thing. Then in the epilogue we see that they became life partners and it just enhanced all of my bad feelings towards this situation since there's no real plot other than their love story.

The book started out strong and I was very invested, but the author didn't know how to handle it, the delivery was lacking in depth and the representation was flawed. It never went deep into the issues that should've been key points in the plot, key points, not plot device. It could've been a great book though.

It sounds great, right? I always thought it sounded so good when I asked for an ARC, but the instant I started reading I began getting The Funeral Flower flashbacks. It’s the story of a girl that revolves around the men in her life, but has some cringe-worthy additions to the normal formula.

For instance, Declan is gay. Or, at least, he says he’s gay even though he’s very clearly attracted to at least one woman. There’s a strange insistence on him being “gay” rather than any other sexuality and while there are some attempts to soften or blur the lines between binary sexualities…. It’s not done often enough.

There’s also suicide in this book as well as mentions of self-harm which was incredibly uncomfortable.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that those issues shouldn’t be addressed in fiction. But, they need to be addressed carefully and treated with the proper respect. For as much importance as Something Beautiful seemed to put on mental health and suicidal tendencies, these tendencies only flared up when the plot required it. They weren’t core parts of any character’s personality. Instead they were more like accessories that could be taken on and off.

I couldn’t tell while I was reading if the author had experience, but didn’t handle it well in fiction or just didn’t know how these things worked.

There’s even a point where a straight woman lectures a gay man on the nature of sexuality and desire which could have and should have been this amazing moment. There is still an issue with biphobia and bi-erasure within the LGBT community and to have one of the main characters tackling that head on would have been all I needed to bump Something Beautiful up another star.

But instead, it just fell flat.

Before I end this on a total down note, let’s talk about some things that I liked:

Cordelia’s father says something homophobic and is immediately chastised by his family for it. He later apologizes.
A+ for calling out boys and their slobber kisses
I was distracted this entire novel thinking that it didn’t make sense that Declan and his brother Finn had Irish names, but their last name was Scottish. They even said they spoke Gaelic which is obviously only Irish and I was going to point out the lack of research. And then when I went to do research of my own, I found out that there’s a lot of commonality and that Scottish Gaelic is a dialect so point to you, Amanda.
The core of the story which is two people growing up and being accepting of each others flaws should have been my favourite story ever.
There’s a positive message about inclusivity throughout the book.

Most of the issues within the book stem from what I’m going to start calling Drama Inflation. It’s when the stakes need to be continuously ramped up in order to maintain the tension because there’s nothing else anchoring the story.

If you want a good example, look at a soap opera. You start with someone cheating on his wife and end with a witch and her magical doll trying to end the world.

So in Something Beautiful we have one tragedy after another poured on top of each other without even giving us a moment to breathe and with no happy times to compare these tragic ones to. So it’s a roller coaster ride that doesn’t stop and is always upside down. It’s probably fun for the first five minutes, but you’re going to get sick sooner or later.

Plus all that blood rushing to your head can’t be good.

4.5/10
Ambitious and with a beautiful story at its core, it can’t maintain its balance.

A great captivating read which sucks you in from the first moment and leaves you a hot mess by the end. Highly recommend!

Something Beautiful, is a story about how fluid love and acceptance can be. The story is about two people who have known each other all their lives. As this book goes from now, to the past, to now, and then to the future. You experience happiness, love, acceptance, tragedy, love and acceptance as the characters develop and grow. Simply put, this book is, Something Beautiful.

Basis first;
• trigger warnings: homophobia, use of queer, self-harm, depression, anxiety, teen pregnancy, suicide attempt, car accident, shooting, death
• The book is being published today and costs 18 dollars for the paperback.
• The book includes lgbt+ characters but the writer is, as she puts it herself, cishet.
• Spoilers ahead!

Okay, look, I have a problem with this book. A pretty major one. Actually, a lot of pretty major ones. This book aims to bring representation to both mental illness and lgbt+ problems but does both in a pretty negative/harmful way.

The writing is weak (I've read bad fanfictions with better writing) and inconsistent. It's quite alright in the first chapters when they're both kids and the whole move to England hasn't quite happened yet, but once that happens, it gets rocky. Gets pretty bad, imo.
Characterisation is questionable. They don't feel like they're any different. Declan, Cordelia, even Peter at the end all feel like exactly the same person. They speak the same, act the same. Both Declan and Cordelia cycle through emotions within conversations like there's no tomorrow, always mellowing down and ending up in a very melodramatic ending of 'oh but I love you'.
The parents? Where do they go? Her sister? Where does she go? I feel like there are lots of characters that are brought in for the moment and to spice things up, then forgotten until they're interesting again.

The portrayal of mental illness as well as queer problems is problematic at best. I was talking to a friend while reading this, sending her snippets and talking about the book while reading and after the suicide attempt, she thought that they were sitting around a dinner table conversing, not in the ER. The suicide attempt and her last words were cheesier than some of my friend's pasta dishes.
When Declan and Cordelia meet again after she returns from England, they immediately are best friends again, she spouts all her problems at him. He somehow guesses she's self-harmed and forces her to show him. Big. Fucking. No go. He also immediately brings up a suicide of someone as a reaction to it.
Somehow, he forces her/pushes her into getting a tattoo, giving her design and placement. Like. Healthy friendship where? tbh. They're so co-dependent. Dean and Sam Winchester are nothing compared to them! Especially once she gets a boyfriend after he tells her he's gay a couple of months into their relationship. That being said? Their entire relationship is so unhealthy! She does everything to be attractive to them, even though in a relationship, you should be able to talk

When talking about the problems with the lgbt+ representation, I feel like she has no business reclaiming a slur that a lot of people in the community are still very uncomfortable with. I, personally, use it to describe myself but that does not mean that a straight person can decide to use it on her characters. If the rest of the book had been good representation, I wouldn't have minded as much.
Kudos to her for the fluidity of Declan's sexuality and allowing him to explore things. It's not talked about a lot, but it was one point that was good.
I feel that the father's reaction and subsequent mellowing was completely out of place. His daughter was in the hospital after trying to kill herself. Yelling at Declan that he can't be gay and he needs to fix this isn't helping. Telling him he's not gay. That didn't fit, it just didn't.

Personally, I feel like the author thinks of Cordelia as the Best Ally. Which is pretty harmful imo. Allies don't deserve crowns for good behaviour. You're just being a decent human being. Get over yourself.

Weak writing, weak characters, plot where? So much happens that leaves you thinking what the actual fuck. Just. No.
I'm actually wondering how this even got published.

Something Beautiful is a novel about two friends, Cordelia and Declan, who had known each other since they were three, and following them through years of their lives together, as Cordelia struggles with mental illness and Declan comes to terms with his sexuality.

IT’S VERY MUCH A NOVEL DRIVEN BY ISSUES

Not just LGBT+ issues. Losing friends through distance, navigating turning from friends to lovers, careers, loss, grief – Something Beautiful covers all of these.

I felt the delivery came with mixed results, however. The writing was good, it told the story in a very easy to read and compelling manner, and it was always emphasising the emotions of the characters and their inner thoughts. The dialogue was nice, too, and went a long way to building character.

I wish the novel was 150 pages longer, though. I feel it could have benefitted from some breathing space between covering all the major events of ~38 years of Declan and Cordelia’s life. The introduction of Cordelia’s mental illness felt very abrupt, and almost as abruptly left the story at a certain point as well. This novel has some pretty dramatic stuff go down in ~200 pages, and at points I wished there was more space in between to both break up these emotional points, and flesh out the world and lives of these characters more.

There were also points where I felt the novel veered from a nuanced portrayal of these issues to a ham-fisted, near-preachy attitude – this mostly came from Cordelia, I noticed.

THE LGBT+ ISSUES THIS NOVEL TOUCHED UPON, UNFORTUNATELY, LEFT ME UNSATISFIED.

I had a mixed response. I identify as bisexual, I’ve been engaging with LGBT+/queer stories for years. My textual reading habits and personal experiences tell me this novel was portraying the life and relationship of a bisexual man. I was expecting a novel that would explore what it means to be a bisexual individual in an opposite-sex relationship – and it certainly did. There’s a lot to unpack there, and it’s something you don’t see in mainstream LGBT+ stories, with its own set of issues to tackle. The opportunity to see these issues explored was what made me interested in reading this.

However, when it came to articulating this, the focus was placed on what Declan called the ‘complexity of my fluid sexuality’.

Which… it is valid, sure. There are individuals who reject labels, or choose broader umbrella terms like queer, as Declan does at one point. But the ‘No Bisexuals’ trope exist, where characters who exhibit bisexual behaviour or characteristics almost always say they ‘don’t use labels’ or ‘just like both’. It’s a trope that, in the long term, is problematic.

To me, a bisexual woman, I was able to relate to Declan’s sexual preferences to my own experiences. Preferring the same sex overall, but finding certain individual opposite-sex people particularly attractive – that’s a perfectly valid form of bisexual attraction. I didn’t see anything particularly complex about it. But, that’s my reading.

THE CHARACTERISATION WAS SOLID, AND MADE FOR A SWEET STORY OVERALL

Declan and Cordelia were both distinct character voices. I ended up liking declan’s voice more. It felt more nuanced. Softer, more reasoned, yet Declan didn’t feel things any less than Cordelia. Her voice and responses always felt… very sharp and intense. Which works because of her mental health issues, but since the focus on this disappeared in the 2nd half of the novel, I mostly attribute it to the really heightened sense of drama.

I liked the characters’ vulnerabilities, and both their hesitancies and their honesty in revealing these vulnerabilities to each other – both as a result of their long-term friendship. Their relationship was very sweet, but it was also flawed and fraught with troubles – realistic.

Again, I’ll come back to wishing the novel was longer. I would have appreciated the opportunity to get to know each main character without the other. They clearly had very major things in their lives, separate from the other – Adam, their careers, Peter – but it was never given a lot of focus. It made the novel feel more bare, almost claustrophobic with the sole focus being on the relationship between these two, in an attempt to chronicle their lives.

ULTIMATELY, I’D RATE THIS 3/5. A QUICK, ENJOYABLE READ, PORTRAYING SOME REAL ISSUES WITH REAL HEART, BUT I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEE MORE.