Margaret McHeyzer

Goodreads Synopsis:
New York Times Bestselling YA Book

If I were dead, I wouldn't be able to see.
If I were dead, I wouldn't be able to feel.
If I were dead, he'd never raise his hand to me again.
If I were dead, his words wouldn't cut as deep as they do.
If I were dead, I'd be beautiful and I wouldn't be so...ugly.
I'm not dead...but I wish I was.

*This is a dark YA/NA standalone, full-length novel. Contains violence and some explicit language.

My Review:
I received a copy of this from Netgalley in show more exchange for a review.

This was a hard book to read, but in a good way. It was so good and so unlike anything I've read lately, but it was all about abuse and that's hard to read. Lilly starts the book as a seventeen year old girl who lives with her dad. She makes up, goes to school, doesn't get to eat hardly ever, and hen she comes home her dad more often than not is already drunk and beats her. She's been convinced it's all her fault. This is her life.

Finally she thinks she's caught a break. After eleven horrible years with her dad, she meets a boy named Trent who seems like he really cares about her and wants what's best for her. One night after being beaten black and blue by her dad, she calls him and escapes to his house away from the danger. Little does she know Trent and his family are not what they seem. She's just dragged from one abuse to another and never seems to get a moment to breathe.

This book deals with a lot of hard issues and I really feel bad for Lilly, for the stuff she's put through. She's grown up with this for all her life and it continues to happen. By the end of the book she's twenty seven. I wish I could help her. She really grows and develops as a character as she's pulled away from all the bad things and replaces them with good things. She shines. I absolutely loved this book and although I see it getting a lot of low rates and reviews for the trigger warnings, I think they make the book better. I did cry reading this a couple times. It's a real issue and these things actually happen to people. It's definitely one of my new favourites, despite the low points in the book. Definitely check it out if you get the chance! Push through the parts that scare you because the end is worth it.

I've included a link to buy the book from amazon, and a link to the authors twitter in case you have any questions.

https://www.amazon.ca/Ugly-Margaret-McHeyzer-ebook/dp/B016Y7ZU1G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=U...

https://twitter.com/MargaretMAuthor

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
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This was a heart-wrenching trainwreck. I could see the horrible things that were going to happen to poor Lily from the first page and there was no way of stopping it, and in that regard it killed me. This was very blunt and very explicit, and a sign of strong story telling.

Though I didn't particularly race through this book, I found myself often unable to look away and resultantly stayed up half the night to finish it. I loved how blunt and unforgiving this was, how matter-of-fact the show more telling of all the events was.

However, this book was often much slower than it needed to be. Instead of summarizing a scene or conversation, every tiny little detail was played out, and a lot of these didn't add to the story. It was then surprising that multiple years were skipped with a lack of detail.

The tone also often felt very jilted. This worked really well for the first half of the book; however, I expected that as Lily evolved, her tone would as well and the writing would be a bit more smooth. Especially considering the field Lily works in, I expected her to have very flowing prose, but this wasn't the case.

I was also surprised in the second half of the book by how easily resolved many things were. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing; however, I felt like it had a chance to make an already impactful punch even stronger, but it was missed.

Definitely if you're easily triggered be careful with this. Otherwise, I highly recommend this as a touching look into the type of life many may live without us knowing.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. show less

Ugly by Margaret McHeyzer is a captivating story about the life of Lily from her senior year through marriage and adulthood. Lily endures horrible abuse from her father for so long that it shapes who she believes herself to be. A life of abuse becomes her normal state of being, although never not terrifying. It is this that causes her to be what many of us would consider a doormat. Lily gets to the place where she blames every bout of domestic abuse as her own fault, no matter how irrational show more that seems.

It is Lily's self hatred and willingness to accept the blame for everything that goes badly in her life that makes her tough to like, but this is a realistic part of who a victim becomes after their abuser strips the all self worth, outside influences, access to money, etc.

Where I feel like this went wrong, and what makes Lily hard to sympathize with on an emotional level is her lack of character development. Lily is one dimensional for the majority of the story. Now, don't get me wrong, I did feel for her, but not in the way that I would have liked when reading a book that has such heavy content.

The other difficulty I had was pacing. The beginning of the book has a ton of action and then things shift after Lily's moment of awakening and we watch her heal and find love...slowly. It isn't at all that I would expect the process to be fast, but it certainly could have been told in a different way. Margaret McHeyzer didn't have any problem jumping over years of Lily's marriage through journal entries, I only wish that she would have taken some of the same approach for the last half of the book. There was entirely too much filler like dinners, pointless conversations, and other frivolities of everyday life.

In the end, I was glad to have read Ugly. It gave me a memorable story with an important message and moments of real inspiration. This is a very good book that with some tweaking could have rocked my world. show less

I hate rating a book that approaches a tough subject so low, but I felt I had to in this case. Abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse are very hard subjects to talk about, write about, and think about. While it is the reality for many, it is easy to shy away from the subject and remain blissfully unaware. I don't feel that way, I want to embrace the problem and bring hope for a better future. I applaud books that approach it, that can open up the communication lines for friends, family show more members, and those suffering or who have suffered in the past. In this case, I feel let down.

Margaret McHeyzer is a wonderful writer, she has an ability to bring a situation to life and allow the reader to feel the emotions with the character. I felt like I was right there with the main character during Ugly, because it is described with such depth. Lily was a great character, one I rooted for, because she's lost her identity in the abuse she's suffered from for the majority of her life. As she found her strength and learned to lean on good friends I rejoiced. She is one of the more believable characters I have read in novels related to abusive situations. I also liked a handful of the minor characters and how they stood up for Lily and stood behind her when she needed it. Those are the kind of minor characters that bring a story to life, allowing you as the reader to see the main character has hope for a better future, even if the main character doesn't see it yet.

Unfortunately, the story line was incredibly hard to keep track of and fairly unbelievable. At one point we'd skipped years, the writing went from first person POV to journal entries, and the abuse got to the point that I didn't see how no one had noticed. While I liked Lily and rooted for her, I didn't understand her desire to stay in bad situations. I understand how abuse can trick someone into staying, but this was beyond normal situations. Then, when good friends came, it was incredibly positive, also to the point of being unbelievable. I kept reading, because I wanted to know more, I wanted to know what happened to Lily and her past, but it kept going and going and going. Then, the ending is wrapped up so quickly, with another completely unbelievable moment. At one point I caught myself skimming the pages instead of reading and that's disappointing for me to admit. I need a book to hold me from the beginning and Ugly, while it started with a bang, just didn't the further I got.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. show less