ALL THE UGLY AND WONDERFUL THINGS is a romance between a twenty-four-year-old man and a thirteen-year-old girl. Wavy is the daughter of abusive, mentally ill meth dealers. She's shunted from home from home for a while, from a grandmother who loves her but dies, to an aunt who doesn't love her and is afraid of the influence Wavy will have over her own girls, before being returned to her completely unfit parents. it's not perfect - wavy's character is a little unrealistic/inconsistent in her awareness and behavior and the last 1/4 didn't have the same emotional depth or richness as the beginning, so it read a little thin and rushed, but it's a badass powerhouse of a book and i am not here to bitch about the trifling. in fact, i'm rounding this 4 up to a 5 because no one can even stop me, and it was probably a 4.5 in my heart, anyway. At lunch, Wavy sat at the table, but didn’t eat anything. Same thing at dinner and breakfast the next morning. Wavy forms an unnatural crush on Kellen. I mean that is bound to happen right? Things just take all kinds of twists and turns from there and I am so glad, so so glad, that after so many years things turn out right. But it was a hard road to get there for many people and some, just didn't make it at all. The author pushes the boundaries here with a story about two lonely, flawed characters who find that their place is with each other and how they are able to accomplish that. Kellen shows us how he is committed by the bond he shares with Wavy by changing things for the sake of Wavy and Donal’s safety and livelihood. There is more depth to this novel than what we might think as a forbidden or unconventional love story if you are able to distance yourself from that.

Nonetheless, this book blew me away. I love a book that can make me feel the way this one did. I'm still feeling conflicted and uneasy with the content. That being said, I'm still thinking about it, and trying to figure out exactly how I feel, days later. That says a lot. Leslie’s face fell when she saw our cousin, but I wasn’t disappointed. As soon as my mother opened the door, Wavy stepped in and surveyed her new home with a bottomless look I would grow to love, but that would eventually drive my mother to despair. Her eyes were dark, but not brown. Grey? Green? Blue? You couldn’t really tell. Just dark and full of a long view of the world. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were translucent, to match her hair. Silver-blond, it clung to her head and ran trails of water off her shoulders onto the entryway tile. As a book that seems intent on legitimizing the relationship between Wavy and Kellen and calling it a love story, it gets zero stars. The author missed the opportunity to take this book in an entirely different direction in the end, but did not. She missed an opportunity to advocate for abused children but instead chose to legitimize a sexual relationship between a child and an adult. Wavy has some strange habits that drives her Aunt Brenda crazy but endears her to Amy. About six months later, after a late night wandering incident it's decided that Wavy is a danger to her cousins and is sent to live with their Grandmother. We learn more about Wavy's mother Val from Grandma Helen. She explains that nowadays, Val would probably be diagnosed with something, but at the time, they just lived with what they called her "germ problem" along with her other issues.

Bryn Greenwood: Because I knew quite a bit about that life, it was easy for me to place the events within the meth culture of the 70s and 80s. Some of the events and people in the book are the product of my personal experiences, but there are no direct correlations. Liam is nothing like my father, and Val is not my mother. Did I know some people who were a bit like Butch and Dee and Sandy? Yes, but I don’t think any of the actual people I know would recognize themselves in the borrowed traits of my characters. Bryn Greenwood: All books are hard in their own way, and this one was no different. There were moments where I didn’t like how the story was going, and I tried to write my way out of it. I hated seeing Wavy suffer. I hated some of the decisions that Kellen made. The heart wants what it wants, though, and every time I tried to write around it, I kept getting tripped up. As a result, a lot of things got deleted. That’s what happens when your first draft is over two hundred thousand words, and you write a hundred thousand words of an entirely different version of the story. Why does there have to be something wrong with her?” Dad said. “Maybe she’s just weird. God knows your sister’s weird enough. I don’t have time for you to get hysterical over everything she does. We have to wrap up the books on the fiscal year-end.” As you were reading, did you find yourself wishing that Wavy and Kellen's relationship would remain platonic? What do you think would have ultimately happened to Wavy and Kellen if the relationship had remained platonic? Kellan es grande y con sobrepeso, motorista y tatuado, ex convicto e hijo de un padre abusivo. No es alguien atractivo, pero es generoso, de una gran personalidad y, lo más importante para Wavy, respeta su espacio y acepta sus silencios sin cuestionarlos.

Wavy is the daughter of a violent man, womanizer and drug dealer, and a drug addicted mother with deep emotional, existential and psychological problems, who transmits to her daughter her fears regarding food and germs. Wavy is a neglected and abused child who broke my heart. Her father is a meth dealer and her mother is an addict. She is constantly exposed to openly casual sex, and therefore, sees it as normal. The ugly. Lccn 2016002476 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.15 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-1200406 Openlibrary_edition So I went into my closet and found a Christmas party dress I hated the one time I wore it. Navy velvet with a lace collar, it was too big for Wavy, but it suited her. With her hair already drying to blond wisps, she looked like she had stepped out of an old photograph.I won a copy of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things from Kelly @ Here’s to Happy Endings YEARS ago. Years, people. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t immediately start reading it. To be honest, I was a little scared of it. I had been warned it wasn’t an easy book to stomach, but also told that it was really good. Both of those are correct. This was both a hard and easy book to read. Here’s my thoughts…

Call me narrow-minded, conservative, judgmental or stupid if you want to. I’ve read books about killers, mobsters, monsters, outlaws, kidnappers and I enjoyed most of them. But when children are involved, I’m NOT okay with that. The baddest of the bad guys were so well written. I hated all the adults and even some of the kids. I don’t know that I truly liked any of them. Well, except maybe Amy. Wavy took Dust Bunny out of the suitcase and handed it to me. A gift? Then it was time for her to go. Grandma hugged us all, while Wavy stood near the door. Mom tried to hug her, too, but she skittered away, slipping past my mother to hug me. Not close enough for our bodies to touch, she rested her hands on my shoulders, and sniffed my hair. When she released me, she ran out the front door.That I managed to get from that point, to the place where I could appreciate the bright spot in the story—two damaged people finding love and acceptance in one another at all costs—should tell you the level of storytelling that Bryn Greenwood pulled off here. Without a doubt, it was the stellar writing that made this so compelling. Not just any author could deliver a controversial topic in such a way that people would feel the need to keep reading and admit they actually enjoyed such a warped and manipulative story.

Ugly and wonderful really are great descriptors for this story. The best thing about it is the completely unsentimental storytelling that, with its constant switching between perspectives, as well as alternating first and third person, beautifully presents a dark tale of childhood, family and abuse. I love reading romance books- it’s my preferred genre. But is this a romance? I guess it is. But it’s more of a love story than true romance if that makes any sense. A lot of this story isn’t romantic and I think that’s what made it so special. The love between these two was beautiful and pure for much of the story and if it started as romance it wouldn’t have worked. This is a couple a rooted for. My heart broke for them both and I wanted nothing more than for them to have each other. In my room, Wavy stood between the two beds, dripping onto the rug. Mom looked anxious, but I was thrilled to have my real live cousin in my room.Please, sweetie, just try a bite.” Mom looked exhausted and she’d only been a stay-at-home aunt one day. Wavonna, sweetie, I’m your Aunt Brenda.” It was a mother I didn’t recognize, the way she pitched her voice high, falsely bright, and gave Sue an anxious look. “Is she—is she okay?”