A ll The Ugly And Wonderful Things By Bryn Greenwood is as fascinating as it has divided literary critics. To the best of my opinion, this piece eclectically reviews a finely written love story.
I will recommend strongly that you peruse through its pages. It is worth reading.
“I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years. “
BLURB
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Bryn Greenwood
Thomas Dunne Books
August 9, 2016
346
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
As the daughter of a meth dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her parents. Struggling to raise her little brother, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible “adult” around. She finds peace in the starry Midwestern night sky above the fields behind her house. One night everything changes when she witnesses one of her father’s thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold, wreck his motorcycle. What follows is a powerful and shocking love story between two unlikely people who ask tough questions, reminding us of all the ugly and wonderful things that life has to offer.
Photo Credit: Bryn Greenwood.
When I saw the conflicting reviews and debates that this book sparked on good reads, I just knew that I had to read it asap. I picked up the book around 8 pm one night thinking,
‘I’ll just start it and see if it’s worth all the conflicting reactions.’
I bet you can all guess what happened. Yeap.
I stayed up all night reading it.
About All The Ugly And Wonderful Things By Bryn Greenwood
And what a wow! From start to finish, I was completely engrossed in this disturbing yet beautiful love story.
The title is just perfect. This book contains all the ugly and wonderful things that can happen to little Wavy, from the moment she arrives at her aunt Brenda’s at the age of five because her mother is in prison.
Wavy’s story is not a pretty one. Growing up with negligent parents on a meth-cooking ranch, there is no one to look out for Wavy.
Eight-year-old Wavy keeps to herself and takes care of her brother as best as she can, but who is there to take care of Wavy? No one at all.
Until she meets Kellen that is.
Kellen, one of her father’s boys is sent to the house to deliver groceries, and he meets Wavy. It doesn’t take him long to realize that Wavy is on her own as her parents don’t give a thought to her wellbeing.
These two become fast friends, and he assumes a sort of fatherly role in her life, taking her to school, buying her new boots, standing up to her father for her, and just generally taking care of her.
“Truth was she took care of him as much as he did her. There were a few times when he was younger that I thought to myself, One of these days, he ain’t gonna show up for work, ’cause he’ll be at home with a gun in his mouth. I had an uncle who did that. Jesse Joe was a man with a deep streak of loneliness until Wavy came along.”
About All The Ugly And Wonderful Things By Bryn Greenwood
As the years go by, the relationship between this unlikely pair blossoms into something else.
This is the part where many readers may become uncomfortable. You may find it unsettling, but at the same time, you may not feel as you would normally feel about such a topic.
Not everyone will be able to get over the fact that Wavy was a minor.
When all is said and done, is it really okay that a little girl fell in love with and had a relationship with a fully grown man and no one did anything to stop it? Not even her father or mother, who was supposed to protect her?
No way, Never.
But I rooted for this couple. My heart broke for them both when Wavy’s aunt and the law/system contrived to keep them apart even after he was done serving his jail sentence. I wanted nothing more than for them to have each other, and I hated that I felt this way.
If there is anything I love about this book, it has to have been the layout and the sequence of events.
The constant switching between perspectives and different points of view of the characters as well as alternating between the first and third-person made this book much more interesting for me.
Usually, this would drive me to bat shit crazy, but the way Bryn Greenwood did it here really worked for me.
We not only get to see how Wavy and Kellen view their relationship, but we also get to see how other secondary characters feel about it.
Not just Aunt Brenda and her cousins, but also her school teachers, her mother’s nurses, the jeweler, her father’s friends, her friends, police officers, social workers, judges, etc.
I love reading romance stories, but even I can’t categorize this book as a romance story.
It’s more of a love story than a romance story if that even makes any sense to you. The love between these two was just so beautiful and pure for a large part of the story.
If you are looking for a unique, unconventional read that will leave your emotions tied up in twists, then this is a great choice.
About All The Ugly And Wonderful Things By Bryn Greenwood