All The Ugly And Wonderful Things

I don't think I've ever read a book with such a difficult subject and still managed to absolutely love it. I've seen this book billed as many things - a romance, a love story, a tragic lover's tale - but the dirty truth of the matter is that it is a story of paedophilia, one which I was totally drawn in by and totally repulsed by in equal measure. This book should never be considered a 'good read', but it is! It's more than a good read, it's absolutely brilliant! I think the reason why I loved it so much is because the two lead characters, Wavy and Kellen, are both broken souls. Broken by their upbringing, the lack of parental love and guidance, and finding each other in a life where everything is just really, really awful, these two were always going to be drawn together. It's a tough one for sure, and I think the author has been really brave to come up with this as her debut. It's without a doubt one of my all time favourite books.

⭐: 4.5 📖: Wavy's father is a drug dealer. Her mother is a schizophrenic. Wavy cannot eat in front of people. A mouth is a dirty place. She doesn't speak more than a couple of words. One day she helps to rescue one or her father's 'business associates', Kellen, following a motorbike accident and the two form an unlikely friendship. 💭: I have starting diving straight into books without knowing what they are about, therefore I didn't know beforehand, but this is a controversial book; a 13 year old girl dating a man almost double her age whom she formed a friendship with when she was 8 years old. But this book is not alike My Dark Vanessa which I read earlier this year. Kellen is not portrayed as the stereotypical predatory peadophile. Greenwood explains in the About the Author section how her father was also a meth dealer and she also dated a man more than twice her age at the age of 13, therefore her personal experiences have helped shape this book into something honest and believable. This book is extremely well written and the story is told from multiple perspectives. You are immediately drawn in. Wavy is such an immensely interesting character but her childhood is heartbreaking. Although she falls in love with Kellen, he is the only person in her life who has ever shown her any ounce of care or love, therefore it is understandable why, as a child, she is drawn to him. This shouldn't be viewed as a love story.

Amazing book

The book was written well especially the beginning it really pulled you in. But have to agree with previous reviews this is not a love story and the neat tie it in a bow ending made me sick. As did the unnecessary graphic details of a 13 year old child performing sex acts on an adult.

Wow, I LOVED this book. From the minute I picked it up I could not put it down and when I wasn't reading it I couldn't help thinking about the story and it's characters. It really does make you think about your own moral compass. About not judging people without knowing their story. I cried more times reading this book than I think I have reading any other book but it also really touched my heart too. Read it, it's great.

but wonderful - would write more but i'm watching cricket

Absolutely loved this book. I wasn't sure if i was going to like it after reading some of the reviews but I'm so glad i gave it a chance as its by far the best book I've read in 2016 and I've read over 200 this year so far. I don't want to say too much about what happens in the book as i would spoil it so JUST READ IT if you only pick one book to read all year make it this one.

It’s not a romantic tale it’s uncomfortable at times and it really takes you down a road that most of us would never comprehend about child neglect, abuse, consent and when do victims have a choice. Having said that I loved it and read it in 2 days and I loved Wavy

Die Geschichte von Wavy und Kellen ist wirklich einzigartig, herzergreifend, überraschend, schockierend und fesselnd bis zur letzten Seite. Ich habe tatsächlich noch nichts Vergleichbares gelesen und lange nicht mehr so sehr bei einem Roman mitgefiebert. Immer wieder denkt man "Nein, bitte bitte lass das jetzt nicht passieren" und dann passiert es doch. Man muss echt auf alles gefasst sein und damit meine ich ein paar wirklich hässliche Dinge, für die die Beschreibung Drama eigentlich gar nicht ausreicht. Man wird bis in die Grundfesten erschüttert. In diesem Buch steckt so viel Schmerz und gleichzeitig Liebe, so viel Gefühl und Glück, dass man trotz kontroverser Themen Sympathie für die ausgefallenen und echt speziellen, doch dadurch gerade wahnsinnig realistischen Charaktere entwickeln muss. Gleichzeitig werden die eigenen Wertvorstellungen in Frage gestellt und man wird zum Nachdenken angeregt. Noch lange nachdem ich das Buch zu Ende gelesen hatte, ging mir die Geschichte nicht mehr aus dem Kopf. Fazit: Absolut lesenswert, ein Must-Read!

Let get a few things corrected before we start. Pedophile: A person who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. That means that this book is not about pedophilia. Sorry, that's simply the fact. A word means something, it doesn't mean just what you want it to. Now that we got that out of the way, lets actually talk about the book and not the hot button words people like to throw around to get attention. This book does detail with a relationship between an adult and what is by popular definition a child. I used those words carefully as the girl child is between the ages of 10 to 14 during most of the book. There is sexual conduct between the characters, masturbating each other is about as far as we are getting here however. I'm not going to go into the good or bad of the relationship, mostly because historically as soon as a woman menstruated she was considered sexually adult and I have personal experience of being taken advantage of as a child. In the end you either are okay with the material or find it offensive, no arguments I make for or against are going to change that. Good 1: Beautiful romance, I loved Wavy and Kellen and thought the moments together were touched with real love. I never felt he was manipulating her, in fact many times I felt she had the upper hand. This book is clearly one where the female is the driver in the relationship. Everything they do together is instigated by her despite his objections. She is simply the only person he loves and the only thing that gets him up in the morning. 2: The characterizations were well done. I was able to get into the heads of the two with Wavy being the more fleshed out model while Kellen felt a little cliché to me. She was the stronger person, if there was no Kellen then Wavy still would of been okay but if Wavy wasn't around Kellen would of eaten a bullet. Kellen to me is a much more tragic figure than Wavy, when he was growing up he didn't have anyone to love him. There were no hero's in Kellen's life, no one to stop the abuse, no one to run too, no one that cared that he went to school. All he had was broken dreams and a battered heart. 3: The overall arc was well done. There were some choices I didn't like but I'll get into those later. The beginning relationship was done fantastic and makes up the most riveting part of the book. You get to see the simple magnificent dysfunction of a family. None of us live in the movies, instead out lives are created out of the dreams we want and the horrors we are put through. I found the family life of the Aunt to be both realistic and sorrowful in its own right. Bad 1: Too many POV's. Sorry but I like my books to be tightly focused on my main characters and while all the POV's revolved around them, while it was illuminating to see them from other angles, I felt that it distracted from the overall book. Some were essential but others felt like filler. This is purely a stylistic thing and should in no way indicate I thought it was bad writing. 2: The ending with the Aunt lacked any kind of punch. There wasn't enough to redeem the character in my book so that meant I felt cheated when it fizzled out. No realizations, no payback, just nothing. 3: The brother was a kind of throw away. I would of liked to have more of how they found him and what he'd gone through. A few chapters of happily every after instead of a brief epilogue of the highlights. We went through hell to see them together, the least we could do was actually get to enjoy it before the book ended. Overall A wonderful book that shows serious guts to tackle such a taboo subject with both understanding and caring. It had to be hell to write this book and wonder just how it would do when it was so out there as far as subject matter. The author stuck to her guns and wrote a book that I think will become one of my favorite in this genre. Few artists have the kind of mettle to create art that they know others will attack. To see those attacks you only have to look at the other reviews. This book isn't about sex with minors, or if you think love will triumph over anything and it sure isn't about pedophilia. Its simple about Wavy and Kellen and their love. Ugly, grotesque, strange and fey, it isn't my kind of love but then no one is asking me to love like them.

O livro tem uma narrativa interessante pela perspectiva de vários personagens. Mas o enredo se torna quase um livro de romance barato, qdo entra em detalhes sexuais do relacionamento dos personagens. E, o tema relacionado à pedofilia pode não agradar alguns leitores, pois a autora tenta justificar os atos de um adulto em relação à uma menina de 14 anos por causa de amor.

My first thoughts before opening this book was hmmn not sure this will be for me, then I started to understand and accept how this situation could come about in the way it did, does this make me weird or a freak... probably and I'm so not sorry, love love love this story! The writing is incredible, the emotions it stirs wow what a roller coaster.

I'm not sure if I have ever felt so many different emotions, so powerfully, when reading a book. Anger. Hatred. Overwhelming sadness. Indecision. I'm still not sure how I feel about this book and some of the things that happened. I just know that I have to get my thoughts out by writing this review. That rarely happens immediately after I finish a book. Sorry this review is long, I have a lot to say. I don't even know what to classify this book as. I can't say it's a beautiful love story. I can't, and I won't. It's raw. It's gritty. It's actually quite disturbing at times. And it's fascinating. It's fascinating because it will push the boundaries of everything you believe about love. About right and wrong. I'm just going to put this out there in case you didn't catch on from the blurb. This is a story of an abused, young girl, Wavy. She begins what is a very important friendship with an equally damaged and lonely, adult man, Kellen. Wavy is damaged from the abuse she has suffered, in so many ways. It's infuriating and heartbreaking to watch what she goes through. Kellen comes along and protects her. He takes care of her in all the ways her parents don't. Ultimately, that friendship turns to love. When she's still very underage. I'll just leave it at that. All I will say is that this story does span many years. By the time it's all said and done, Wavy is an adult. BRAVE. Wow. This book was brave. After finishing, I have so much to say but that word keeps coming back to me. To write a detailed story like this, with the abuse Wavy suffers, the life she's forced to live as a child is hard enough. But my god, to add that kind of “love story.” So BRAVE. I need to be clear, I don't think it's brave because readers will have some big epiphany that what happened should EVER be tolerated in our society. And I can't say this was a story that needed to be told to open the readers eyes, or to make them learn some important lesson. It's brave because it IS wrong. As humans, we know this is wrong. But the author made me believe that no matter how wrong, these two saved each other from a fate MUCH WORSE than what would have become of them had they not had each other. She made me ask questions I never thought I would ask myself. She made me answer those questions in a way that I never thought I could. Ever. And probably never will again. SMART. So smartly written. This is what made this story. The lack of cheap plot tricks to make the reader fall for Kellen was so brilliant. She never tried to make you fall in love with him or to find the “forbidden” angle sexy. It was never meant to be romantic or sexy. This book is told in multiple POV's from many different characters. From Wavy, Kellen, family, and friends. Those multiple POV's allowed the reader to feel angry. To feel heartbroken. To decide for yourself whether their relationship was right or wrong. The author never forced what she wanted you to feel down your throat. Crazy as it may seem, in the end, I felt okay with where these two ended up. A product of everything HORRIBLE they had ever been through, especially Wavy, they were able to give each other something that no one else could've ever given them. No one. And she made me believe that they both deserved to have that. How the author made me believe that, I have no idea. As a mother of a nine year old girl, I'm still baffled that she was able to do that. REAL. Despite all the madness, these characters felt very real to me. If you can make it far enough in the book, you will root for these characters to triumph over everything. It's just a matter of if you will root for them to do so together. Either way, I have no doubt that readers will feel very strongly, one way or another, about this book. Here's the thing, I can't say I loved how this book made me feel. What I can say is that is was brilliantly written. It made me feel so much. It made me ask so many questions. It is a book that I will continue to think about for a very long time. It deserves no less than five stars for that. It is NOT for everybody. I don't think everyone will be able to read this one. But, if you ever want to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, this is the book to do that with.