I haven’t added a book to “my-best-reads-ever” in over 2 years…This book deserves to be there. I still don’t know what to think about it. I just know I couldn’t stop feeling whilst reading this book. My heart broke over and over again. The parts that I had trouble with coming to terms with morally are the very same parts I am most thankful for. For without those parts this would have been a very different story. It would have been a story of a young girl and her brother with no hope at all in a very violent world. It would have been a story that had no stars to guide Wavy in the darkest hours to find a better life.

Greenwood has done an amazing job of simply telling a story. She doesn’t try to make the reader take a moral high road. Nor does she warn us to stay off a path of despair. Instead, the reader is left to find their own way and to struggle with the road signs that we can easily read, but which are so difficult to understand.

Don’t read this book looking for some sappy love story….this novel will punch you over and over again in your guts. It is brutal. It will take your breath away…yet, once you finish the last page, you’ll marvel at the wonder that can be found in the world. It is both an ugly world….but more importantly, it is a wonderful world…There are so many wrongs in this novel and yet somehow, at the end, Greenwood has made it all right…

Wow…I’m so feeling this book…really….so thankful to have read this novel…

Until next time…
Urania xx

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review

Buy your copy now All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Byrn Greenwood