O Beautiful

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It pains me to say this since I thought Shelter was a phenomenal read, but this book tries to do too much. It attempts to cover: fracking, the impact of oil money disrupting traditional communities, rural/urban dynamics, absentee parent/family issues, sexism and misogyny (including academic sexual harassment, rape, and assault), racism (being biracial, the experience of Native Americans, and more), and the rise of white supremacy. Ultimately we end up with a very uneven book where instead of interlacing these areas with the complexity they deserve, we end up with pockets of topics that start and stop with little cohesiveness.

I also found Elinor an unsympathetic main character who reminded me a lot of the MC in The Flight Attendant.

Jung Yun's prior book Shelter absolutely wrecked me, so I picked up her new release O Beautiful without much thought. This was beautiful and heart wrenching but yet, the pacing was a bit off for me. Some parts felt more dry in the writing style and plot. Overall it didn't pact the ‘oomph' in the end for my reading tastes.

If you didn't get along with this one, I still highly recommend Shelter. If you've read Shelter and the premise of this book intrigues you, pick this one up as well as much of Jung Yun's writing talents show strong in this novel too.