I’m not sure what to say about this book. It was fine. Well written with a decent story but it just didn’t do anything for me. It didn’t move me at all and left me feeling a bit flat. Nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t have that X factor for me. It was a lot younger feeling than I expected which might have accounted for the disconnect.

This was a great thriller that kept me intrigued from start to finish, a great concept executed really well

Stylistically, this is written in a very self-consciously YA manner, in terms of structure, plot and tone. The chapter intros, with the hints of spoilers but "no, I'm getting ahead of myself" shtick, presumably designed to intrigue but in fact merely irritate, are a cliche rapidly becoming an unwelcome obligatory trope for this genre. The writing incorporates a certain deliberate vagueness that's meant to signify profundity or deep emotional impact and is, again, ubiquitous in this genre. The plot has many significant holes. And that is how to say I'm not the target audience in a bunch of words!

I'm pretty sure this book would've hit very differently for 14 year old emo girl me. The tortured, doomed romance, the totally unnecessary death of the female MC, the unrelenting misery - yes, I'd probably have loved it. 47 year old mother me was pretty unmoved.

Really wanted to like, really tried hard, don’t get me wrong I think some people will love this (my sister did) however it just wasn’t for me.

I really wanted to like this book, but I could not get into it at all. I can't pick out anything I particularly didn't like, it just didn't resonate with me the way I expected.

What Beauty There Is is a love story. And like all the best love stories it left me in tears. It's a thriller, that had me gripped from the shocking opening to the breathtaking ending.

There's a brutality to this book, a starkness to it, with the cold, unsympathetic world of snow, wind and lonely pines, reflected in the short, often blunt prose style. But within that, within Cory's prose as much as within the world she creates, there is a poetry and a beautiful tenderness that often surprises. It's an incredible feat, balancing the two so skillfully that you barely notice the transitions, somehow that short brutal prose has its own poetry to it, one that suits perfectly the world it's set in.

What Beauty There Is feels at times like it could be a Coen Brothers movie, one of the Southern noir ones, and I'm left wondering if the villain of the book, Bardem, is a deliberate reference to No Country For Old Men's Javier Bardem. Like him, Bardem is a cold blooded killer, a man capable of shocking violence without so much as a flicker of remorse. He's truly terrifying and gives the whole book a very palpable feeling of threat throughout. There's also Doyle and Midge, the cops, who have that comfortable charm seen in the Fargo police department in the film Fargo. The plot has Jack and Ava thrown together, with drug dealers, killers and cops all trying to track them down while they try to stay safe and free and a step ahead of everyone, and it really captures that Southern noir feel incredibly effectively. It's scary, it's exciting and it's totally thrilling.

The relationship between Jack and Ava, and between the two of them and Matty, Jack's little brother, is beautifully realised. There was so much tenderness there, yet also this recognition that these are people who've been consistently hurt and let down by the people they should have been able to trust, and what that means for their future relationships. The whole thing was heartbreaking at times and totally affirming at others and I just loved it. That emotional core of the book is just beautiful.

What Beauty There Is is stunningly beautiful, capturing perfectly a brutal world of an Idaho winter, with nowhere to turn and nobody to trust, with a powerful, yet subtle, emotional core.

We are introduced to Jack Dahl, a boy whose life is looking rather bleak. With his father in prison and his mother gone, leaving her children to fend for themselves, Jack is the only one who’s left to look after his little brother Matty. Money is tight, and Jack is feeling on the knife’s edge – how will he care for his brother? Will he follow in his father’s footsteps? Jack has some awful decisions to make, few choices from a range that is bad only. What will he do?

And then, one day, Jack meets the new girl at school. There’s something spceial about Ava, there’s no denying that. And the relationship that results in their chance meeting is truly one of a kind, something that I will think about for a long time. But what I absolutely loved the most in this book was the bond between Jack and Matty. It may have been the terrible, shocking, heartbreaking circumstances that strengthened it even more, but it was there right from the start.

Seeing Ava and Jack together was lovely too though. When being left by everyone, the few people you do have take a very special place in your heart. That was the case when Jack meets Ava. Even though they seem to be so different – to come from different worlds, so to speak – there was something like an inivisble force pulling them towards each other. Even though Ava seems to have had very much the opposite childhood to Jack and a home that he could have only dreamed of, it soon becomes clear that there is way more to it, and that everything might not be as it seems. The term ‘gilded cage’ came to mind every now and then.

It made my heart ache to see how fast Jack had to grow up, how mature he had to be when faced with impossible decisions. When you have no one to turn to, what do you do? You do what it takes to keep the person you love and the last one you have left safe. The author managed to make this very dark, very tense, and very psychologically straining story at the core easier to deal with by adding these special bonds to it. The characters are believable and well written, and you root for them from the start.

When one catastrophy after the other shatters a young person’s life, the little good they experience means so much more. This is the story that shows what it means when they have to decide which route to take, and how they deal with what life is offering them – even if it is cruel and hard and far from easy. If such a person has to go to great lengths to protect the people they love, this makes the story all the more heartwarming.

So, what exactly is What Beauty There Is? It’s a love story, it’s a family tragedy, it is a story of hope and fear and love, but also of loss and sadness and heartache. If you are looking for a soft and gentle romance with a happily ever after, you might want to look elsewhere. Here, you will get a real story that touches your heart, a story so raw that it will stay with you for much longer than you were prepared for.

If you are looking for a unique, deep, and touching YA that will make your heart race, your palms sweat, and the hours of sleep trickle away because you just have to turn more pages, this is the book for you. 4 stars from me for this unique story, and I can’t wait for more by the author!

What’s the last book that left you with a book hangover and unable to really put your thoughts into words?
For me it was What Beauty There Is..
The story follows Jack and his brother Matty as they try to survive on their own. Then Ava arrives to help them but she doesn’t tell Jack everything, putting everyone in danger.

This debut novel is beautifully written and presents a narrative full of determination, loss, resilience and survival.
Despite the violent and traumatic events of their lives, the Dahl brothers show how love can triumph and allow you to remain positive.
At times, the events of the narrative are difficult to read with violence playing a prominent role. I found myself wanting to read more straight away just so I knew everything was going to be ok.

Even though I loved this book, I have found it really difficult to actually write a review. I don’t want to spoil anything and am also struggling to do the book justice! My thoughts are constantly going back to what happened in the story and playing it over again.
The main thing I would say is just read it!

Absolutely stunning. If I were to summarise this book in one word it would be this - wow! From the first page I was gripped by the story of these teens and their lives; the tension and heartache are immediate and are relentless throughout the story. The writing is so atmospheric, I could picture the surroundings vividly and imagine the characters clearly. I desperately wanted to help Jack, his love for Matty and his selflessness shone through, while Bardem is truly terrifying. I felt like I was holding my breath while reading parts and the ending is everything it was built up to be while wishing it wasn't! Just stunning, I haven't read anything like this before so I wasn't sure if it was going to be for me, but I absolutely loved it. What beauty there is in this book!

Really loved this book! Something different and fresh in the YA genre, the pace was quick and it was a great and easy read!

Pain. It’s an ongoing theme in What Beauty There Is and for good reason. We see the world through various eyes but mainly the story follows Jack and his brother Matty. The emotions hit you right from the start and don’t let you go all the way to the end. Jack has such heart and love for his brother. It’s something that you can feel in every action, every choice he takes. His determination to protect him. The pain he wants to hide him from. It hurts.

What I enjoyed about this book the most was Jack, Matty and Ava’s interactions. I felt the hurt, the wounds, the love, the tears. It’s hard to fully describe how I felt about this book and I don’t want to spoil anything. I will say that the end of this book is bittersweet and it brought me to tears. I loved the story and the journey that I was taken on.

So what didn’t I like? I didn’t like the ‘bad guys’ not only because they were terrible people but because I felt that they were too good. It is like those movies where the bad guy kicks ass and is just perfect at it. It’s unrealistic. Despite that, a fact that I think doesn’t take too much away from the story, it works. Jack, Ava, Matty, Doyle. Hell even Maggie were all the better parts that pulled it all together.

I loved the formatting of this book, there were parts that were poetic and full of emotion, and the chapter set up was actually really intriguing. It wasn’t something that I had seen before and I think that always works really well for me.

Buy this book. Especially if you want to read a book with so much heart that yours may break just a little bit.

Such an interesting read. A bit of a heartbreak, a bit emotional, a lot of survival, and a bit of humanity at the end.
A tale of fighting against the odds and surviving.

I really love a good thriller that is dark and What Beauty There Is certainly lives up to that. Cory Anderson has written a dark and intense mystery thriller that is not always easy to read. Actually it is downright heartbreaking at times. Yet, the story is beautifully written and we witness how the main characters never lose hope even when it seems as if all hope is gone.

Seventeen year old Jack and his younger brother, Matty are all alone. Their mother is gone and their father, Leland is in prison. Jack and Matty have less than twenty dollars to their name, their home is being foreclosed on and their water heater is busted, leaving for brutal winter nights. Afraid of social services taking Matty away, Jack runs away promising Matty they would always stay together. Jack knows his only option is in finding the drug money his father had hidden in order to survive.

When Ava tries to help the brothers survive, it opens up another door for her as well. Her father, Bardem, is a killer and has controlled Ava for her entire life teaching her never to trust or love another soul. But, she can’t help opening up her heart to Jack and little Matty even though she knows she shouldn’t. Will the two brothers along with Ava ever be able to have a normal loving and healthy life away from the devastation of their childhoods?

This story is really raw and emotional and I found myself really heartbroken over their lives that both Jack and Ava had to endure and basically just never really having a happy childhood. This is not an easy read and may trigger some readers, but this really is a story that pulls you right in and loves at a semi fast pace with a lot of action between its short pages. This is a must read if you enjoy stories that easily pull you in and make you fall in love with the characters.

Jack Dahl is living a teenage experience no teenager should live. His father is in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, but a robbery he did. And his mother has just committed suicide at the tail end of opioid addiction by hanging herself in her bedroom. Her son, Jack, is left to bury her in the frozen ground behind their house (a house they no longer own; it’s just been foreclosed) and look after his young brother, Matty, with a meager thirteen dollars to his name and little food.

Jack is determined to survive and not to let the state take Matty away. He seeks out his dad in prison, begging him for the location of the money from the robbery (actually, drug money). But there’s a price attached to that information, someone willing to kill for the money’s location. That someone is Bardem, a vicious killer. Someone not to be crossed. And no one understands that better than Ava, who witnessed her mother’s disappearance at his hands. But Ava will not leave Jack and Matty without help. Even if it means going against the most dangerous man she knows — her father.

What Beauty There Is is a heartbreaking portrayal of growing up with only fringes of hope, of the unbreakable bond between brothers and the tender bonds of friendship. Anderson’s writing is pure poetry, each word measured and exact. The atmosphere (winter-chilled and unforgiving) is conjured in moments, leaving your heart to soar and shatter through the movements of this tightly-plotted thriller. Not least because Jack, Matty, and Ava feel so incomparably real.

A marvel of a debut novel. A true knockout.

4.5/5 stars

Gosh this is very hard- hitting. Made me shiver. Well written though. You can really feel the characters' desperation. Good thriller with an interesting angle and very important deeper theme.

At its core What Beauty There Is is a story about family. The love and lengths people will go to protect those they call family.
It's not a light-hearted read. Deals with some sensitive subjects, but is excellently written and a very powerful read.

This was such an intense but beautiful book! The theme that stood out for me the most was the importance of family, Jack would do anything to provide for & protect his brother and he truly stood out to me as the joint protagonist. This is not a light-hearted book but there are moments of light that pervade through the darkness and give you hope for Jack, Ava & Matty.

I also really liked how the chapters were structured. It suddenly starts to go backwards indicating that it’s one of the potential outcomes, Ava indicates at some point that something different could have occurred. There are many potential paths in our lives which are affected by our decisions and I really loved this idea.

Please see my link for a fuller review.

A hauntingly beautiful and deeply sad book. At times it was painful to read, especially Jack's determination to care for Matty amid the memories of how his family used to be. Comparable to Winter's Bone as a portrayal of poverty and hardship in the richest nation on earth. The fact some reviewers have commented that Jack and Matty's desperation seems exaggerated only serves to prove how badly this novel is needed: it's uncomfortable to face the fact that in the US (and here in the UK) children have to live like this, but from my time as an educator I can sadly confirm that there's nothing exaggerated.

Cory Anderson has written a belter début set in the freezing and bleak wintry landscape of the Rockies.

The story focuses on Jack Dahl, aged 17 and his younger brother, Matty. Their mum who is addicted to opiates has hanged herself. Leland, their dad, is in prison for the robbery of a pawn shop, though the money actually belonged to men in the drug trade. Leland ran with the money which he hid before his incarceration. Jack and Matty are struggling for survival with barely any food or cash, but Jack will do whatever it takes to protect vulnerable Matty, who is under threat of being taken away by social services. Ava Bardem is the daughter of a merciless and cruel man, Victor, and a sadistic killer, though he loves Ava to the point where she lives in isolation as no one is allowed near her. Jack helps her out of a tricky situation at school. Desperately short on options and unable to get any work, Jack decides to hunt down the money hidden by his father so that he can financially provide for Matty, but this makes him a walking target and one of the men after him is Victor Bardem...

There is a lot to enthuse over in Cory Anderson's heartbreaking journey of violence, evil, brutality, hope and despair. An entertaining and engaging thriller right through to the end this emotional roller coaster will ensnare many readers as it did me. What Beauty There Is is an electrifying début, so steel yourself and dive in.

I read What Beauty There Is in staves with other Pigeonholers as part of a group. A special thank you to Penguin Random House, Cory Anderson, NetGalley and The Pigeonhole for a complimentary copy of this novel at my request. This review is my unbiased opinion.

What Beauty There Is is an atmospheric and hard-hitting novel set in the quiet landscape of Idaho. Loneliness permeates the novel but it’s characters still dream of a world where they will smile again. The isolation is hard on two young boys who only have each other. Anderson examines the harsh realities of rural life, childhood trauma and what it truly means to be a survivor. Be prepared for a very raw story.

The main characters in the book are Jack, Matty and Ava. Jack is 17 and quickly becomes the sole care-giver to his younger brother Matty. Their sibling dynamic is very tender, natural and realistic. We learn quickly that Jack will do whatever he can to give Matty the normal life he deserves. Ava’s life has been no better and the decisions she has to make in the novel are so layered and complicated because of it. She has been taught not to love or trust by her dangerous and controlling father.

There are so many times in the novel when your heart breaks for these kids because of the trauma they have experienced. Ava has one particular line which simply broke me. You just want someone to give them a break so they can be normal kids instead of being intertwined with their parents complicated existences. I won’t talk about the two fathers that feature in the novel here as I think discovering the characters for yourself is an important part of the story.

The novel is beautifully written and is written from multiple perspectives but initially focuses on Jack. Each chapter has an introduction from Ava, which provide an insight into her thoughts and introduces events that take place before the start of the novel. Initially I found these sections a little confusing, that is until we meet Ava and then it clicked into place. The stand out feature of the novel is the world building as it is so lyrical & atmospheric. You really get lost in Jack’s world, even when it isn’t a pleasant place to be. The pacing is very good and as the events of the novel unfold it picks up to match the action.

What Beauty There Is is a hauntingly beautiful tale that will submerge you into a vivid, dark world and keep you turning the pages. Although I am not a regular reader of YA thrillers, this was such a pleasant surprise. I was not expecting to be engrossed so quickly! I would not recommend this book to readers that are sensitive to violence and highly recommend checking out any trigger warnings before starting the novel. It certainly isn’t an easy read in terms of content as it is very hard hitting. The story itself is gripping, well paced and I desperately rooted for the main characters. If you like dark, intense thrillers that are an emotional rollercoaster then I highly recommend What Beauty There Is.