Publication Date: Out now!!!
Format: Hardback & Ebook
Price: HB £12.99 / Ebook £8.99
Publisher: Penguin
I would like to say a huge thank you to The Write Reads team who have accepted me to take part on this fantastic and thrilling book’s tour, I would also like to say a huge thank you as well to Penguin for both inviting and sending out this book for me to review I am always extremely grateful for being able to do this. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Cory Anderson, the creative talent for conceiving such an atmospheric, moving and dark portrayal of hard life in America where the basic necessities of life are hard to come by if you are poor and if your own parents cannot help or support you. Intrigued? want to know more? lets head to the blurb to find out.
When everything you love is in danger, how long can you keep running to survive?
Life can be brutal
Winter in Idaho. The sky is dark. It is cold enough to crack bones.
Jack knew it
Jack Dahl has nothing left. Except his younger brother, Matty, who he’d die for. Their mother is gone, and their funds are quickly dwindling, Jack needs to make a choice: lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison.
So did I
Ava lives in isolation, a life of silence. For seventeen years her father, a merciless man, has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one.
Did I feel the flutter of wings when Jack and I met? Did I sense the coming tornado?
But now Ava wants to break the rules – to let Jack in and open her heart. Then she discovers that Jack and her father are stalking the same money, and suddenly Ava is faced with a terrible choice: remain silent or speak out and help the brothers survive.
Looking back, I think I did……..
Where do I start with this beauty?… I hear you shout at the beginning… Of course lol. But honestly I have no words to describe how utterly captivating and heartbreaking this book is, and yet it’s so beautiful and bleak I would urge anyone young or old to read this. Yes I do know I have a lot more to say and what I just said maybe a lie (a little one, you can at least allow me that) what I mean is that I was left feeling, emotionally drained, strung out and yes contemplative about how easily life can unravel in a blink if two of the people that you rely on to care and protect and provide for you are either not in a position to do so or have gone in tragic circumstances.
For me my heart bled for both Jack and Matty, mainly for Jack as he soon became the head of the family that he had left and had to shoulder the burden of looking after and protecting Matty from all ills especially not being sent to foster care. He just has to find the money that his father went to prison for, but though it all sounds on paper relatively easy, it’s far from that. Jack soon realises he is in up to his neck, dealing with people who would take no chances at killing him on the spot and taking what is owed to them. But its not just about Jack and Matty, it’s about how the people that should have been there to look after them, like their mother and father, either had given up due to drug use and a sense of failure and hopelessness, or because of the many mistakes and being caught and sent to prison, means that Jack and Matty have to live under their parents shadow of failure and mistakes too. Though there are people who seem to want to look out for them, Red a friend of their fathers, though slightly unreliable and just as disreputable a figure, there is also the police officers who grow concerned for them both as a series of events unfold and which they try to make sure the kids are ok.
There is also another important character, Ava the daughter of a controlling father. With a reputation for being cold and cruel and would stop at nothing to kill a teenager if he got in his way especially if said teenager was the son of the man that knows where a cache of drug money can be found. I was hooked, gripped, shocked and enthralled by this high octane drama being played on the mean streets of a town in Idaho. This really sears you and breaks your heart, and moves you to the point of tears. The characters are so starkly, vividly and brutally portrayed that you could almost see the scenes depicted being played out on the streets where you live, This book holds back no punches, it’s painful, heart wrenching, heart breaking, brutal, stark and yet beautiful in its brutality.
This is definitely one to make you think long and hard about your life compared to similar families like Jack Dahl, who have to go through so much in their life and sometimes they may not have much hope and become enmeshed in their own downfall as they follow their own mistakes which may have been proceeded before by their own parents. This really is a tough and hard hitting subject and one that really does need to be looked into. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, if you must know its YA, but please don’t let that stop you from picking this book up, it really doesn’t feel like it at all. This is a belter of a book and I for one loved it even if I feel it has beaten me round the head with a baseball bat.
Ratings: 5 🌟s with a large ☕️ and a large 🍰…. you will need these and more 😂… this book will hook you in until the last page.
Authors Blurb:
Cory Anderson is a winner of the League of Utah Writers Young Adult Novel Award and Grand Prize in the Storymakers Conference First Chapter Contest. She lives in Utah with her family. What Beauty There Is is her debut novel.
I hope you have enjoyed this travel through a gritty, tough, harsh and brutal life in a small town in America, and how something so simple as family can be as complex, fraught with peril and danger and yet there is always hope for things to get better, no matter the circumstances. If you are intrigued by this book you can find this on Waterstones, Independents and of course on Amazon. As we will soon be seeing shops open, all I can say to you is go…go and frolic (well not too much) and enjoy the sight, sounds and smells of a good book shop, they will love to see you as I will be to see them and all those marvellous books just waiting to be browsed at and perused. So I will leave you now to say Happy Reading and see you all soon!!!!
Zoe's Book Nook 
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