Name: Beautiful Animals
ISBN: 9780553447378

Lawrence Osborne

"On a summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, two girls make a startling discovery: a young Arab man washed up on shore, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging against across the sea. When a simple plan to help the stranger goes horrifically wrong, all must face the consequences they have set in motion"--

A Novel

Beautiful Animals

This book TRANSPORTED me. Such a vivid and perfect read for summer, I want to read it on a beach.  

erin alise 

Lacy W

Thank you to Hogarth Books and Goodreads for letting me read this early...even though I didn't read it until October. It was very much appreciated! All thought and opinions are my own. 

note: like I mentioned in a status update, this is under the hardcover edition but I have paperback. The ISBN number was the same for the hardback so I just kept it that way. Plus the covers matched

This was an...interesting book to say the least. It it will definitely be on the top 10 list of my most unusual books I've ever read. One of the weirdest aspects was that I didn't bond with any of the characters but I was still pretty invested in their lives. I felt like I was an outsider looking in. I was just watching these people and waiting to see what they would do. It was certainly an odd sensation to say the least. 

The writing was incredibly flowery and poetic with heavy metaphor and simile uses. It was very reminiscent of Roshani Chokshi's The Star-Touched Queen with the way the writing was. Greece was defined in such a beautiful way, it made my heart hurt. One of the places I so desperately want to go to is Greece and this book made me crave it. 

While the writing itself was poetic, it had a sinister undertone that stayed with me for most of the reading. There was a lot of religious intolerance mentioned. The whole Christian vs Muslims. Refugees vs everybody else. With the way the political climate is now, I certainly felt chilled. Even in Greece, where you don't hear a lot of political turmoil like in the USA, there are issues of refugees and non Christians. It was certainly an eye opener. 

However, I felt like this book wasn't as creepy as the it could have been, even though the sinisterness stayed with me. I really was just creeped out by what happened in the beginning. Most of the disturbing incidents happened early on in the book. After that, it was the three people involved- Faoud, Naomi and Samantha- just living their lives with this terrible secret. Sure, Naomi was very creepy and something tells me she had a lot of things wrong with her but that was it. I felt underwhelmed for about half of the book. 

Despite that criticism, this book was pretty good. It has piqued my interest enough that I will take a look at other works this author has done. I was pretty sold on the beautiful writing and the interesting title. Overall, I am impressed.

Beautiful Animals A Novel

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