Title: Searching for Beautiful
Author: Nyrae Dawn
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Publication date: March 4th 2014
Format: ebook | 304 pages
Genre: YA | Contemporary
Before, Brynn had a group of best friends, a loving boyfriend, a growing talent for pottery. She had a life. And after…she had none.
When Brynn lost the boyfriend who never loved her, the friends who feel she betrayed their trust, and the new life just beginning to grow inside her, she believes her future is as empty as her body. But then Christian, the boy next door, starts coming around. Playing his guitar and pushing her to create art once more. She meets some new friends at the local community centre, plus even gets her dad to look her in the eye again…sort of.
But can Brynn open up her heart to truly find her life’s own beauty, when living for the after means letting go of the before?
My thoughts:
Brynn's life takes a turn for the worst when her mother dies of an aneurysm. While Brynn thinks she's found the perfect man to help her get back on her feet, she soon realises he's not what he seems when he questions whether Brynn's baby is his and asks her to get an abortion. After growing apart from her father, best friends and abandoning her love of pottery, Brynn has the hard task of finding a way to get back on the road to recovery.
The character that made this book for me was Christian. His romantic interests aside, I thought he made a fantastic character. He was honest from the get go and it was almost enough to push Brynn away completely. I think part of my enjoying reading about him though was that I found him to be incredibly relatable. In terms of where he fit into the story, I thought he worked really well with Brynn's character in pushing her to make the first steps to becoming more like her old self. He made up for all of Brynn's weaknesses and in turn, Brynn had no problem telling Christian where he was going wrong. They made the perfect team.
While this story was pretty predictable, I still found myself reading it in no time on account of me just wanting to know what happened to all the characters. The characters really hold a story like this together so I was happily surprised to find out that this book had a nice set of characters that I started to really root for.
However, I really didn't get on with the ending. A book like this is all about the emotions the characters are going through and the journey to their recovery so I like it when the story takes its sweet time coming to the inevitable conclusion. This ending was way too rushed for me. All of the loose ends were tied up almost in bullet points it went so quickly. There was no lead up to the ending, it was just in my face and then the book was over.
Even though I loved the main characters, including Brynn's father, I didn't like some of the others so much. The so called best friends of Brynn that abandoned her and her ex-boyfriend Ian who was going out with Brynn before her mum died and before Jason happened. I thought they were completely unnecessary which was evident by how much they actually played a part in the story. They only really appeared in the beginning of the book and right at the end. I know it's difficult to do, but I like all of the characters that make an appearance to give something to the story. They were the kind of characters that I wouldn't care if they were in the story or not. It would have made no difference to me.
Overall I thought this was a good read. It frustrated me a little but it didn't make me want to give up reading it. If you're a fan of contemporary Searching for Beautiful is a really quick read that you'll get through in no time.
My rating: 6/10
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