BEAUTIFUL is stark, disquieting and, quite simply, riveting. Amy Reed is an author to keep on your radar.

Despite whoever created it, it's my world, & the only one I've got. Might as well make the best of it, right? Might as well have a little fun while I'm here. Or a lot of fun. Might be dead tomorrow.

I'm sad. Pressed down by sorrow. I'm angry. Pissed at God, if there is one, and the way things are. I'm scared. Confused by the whys. Why are we here? Is there, really, some intelligent design? Why do we cry for someone who leaves us if there's some Grand Pearly Gate in the sky? Why worry about how we build our lives if the ultimate ending for all is death, a single breath away? (358)

back turned, you don't have to look at what you've left behind. And the first person who turned their back on you can't watch you break down and cry.

Some secrets can't be kept too long. No matter how hard you try to hide them, sooner or later they scurry out from your cupboards, cockroaches on the run.

I'd like to cry now. Don't know how.

I feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.