Status
Available
Call number
Call number
F REE
Collection
Publication
Simon Pulse (2009), Edition: Reprint, 232 pages
Description
Haunted by serious problems in her recent past, thirteen-year-old Cassie makes a fresh start at a Seattle school but is drawn by dangerous new friends into a world of sex, drugs, and violence, while her parents remain oblivious.
Similar in this library
User reviews
LibraryThing member fayeflame
OMG! i don't know what to say about Beautiful, I mean Cassie is 13 years old and living a life on the edge.Beautiful is raw and eye opening. It all comes down to choices and how you want to be, one decision can change everything.
Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every
Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every decision she makes or doesn’t make cuts you open. All you want is for it to stop, for Cassie to stop. Then you just want to shake her and be like "What are you doing?".With all these raw emotions, the novel is almost like a memoir. Like you are Cassie, being regretted and lost.Your waiting for that BIG crash and burn. Your hoping for it to turn around, and maybe it does..... Cassie just has to find herself in the ashes.
Overall Beautiful is a powerful novel. I know i'm obsessed with the darker sides of life, i really don't know why, i like the intensity and edge. That's why i like Ellen Hopkins too. If your a Ellen Hopkins fan you should DEFINITELY read Beautiful.
Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every
Show More
decision she makes or doesn’t make cuts you open. All you want is for it to stop, for Cassie to stop. Then you just want to shake her and be like "What are you doing?".With all ...more OMG! i don't know what to say about Beautiful, I mean Cassie is 13 years old and living a life on the edge.Beautiful is raw and eye opening. It all comes down to choices and how you want to be, one decision can change everything.Reed makes us become Cassie, it's like a game of chess,each and every decision she makes or doesn’t make cuts you open. All you want is for it to stop, for Cassie to stop. Then you just want to shake her and be like "What are you doing?".With all these raw emotions, the novel is almost like a memoir. Like you are Cassie, being regretted and lost.Your waiting for that BIG crash and burn. Your hoping for it to turn around, and maybe it does..... Cassie just has to find herself in the ashes.
Overall Beautiful is a powerful novel. I know i'm obsessed with the darker sides of life, i really don't know why, i like the intensity and edge. That's why i like Ellen Hopkins too. If your a Ellen Hopkins fan you should DEFINITELY read Beautiful.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jaybird61
My mother was a librarian, and sometime in the summer of 1973, she handed me a novel that upset, intrigued, and convinced me so fully, I almost refused to go to middle school. She didn’t really give the novel to me. She shoved it into my hands, insisting that I read it. That book was the novel Go
But really, the most frightening aspect of that novel was that I understood completely why “Alice” wanted to be other, different, new. Her need made sense. It could be me. It would be me if I didn’t watch out.
It took me a few years to get over the reading of that novel, but when I opened to the first page of the novel Beautiful by Amy Reed, I was right back in my young self, reading Go Ask Alice for the first time. From the first pages of Beautiful, I was shouting to myself, “No! Stop. Turn around. You don’t need Alex. Don’t go with Alex. Stop.”
But the main character Cassie has to follow that white rabbit down the hole. This is her journey. This is the hole she has to fall into, taking us with her. And we want to go. Not really. Okay, yes, we do. We have no choice. Her loneliness and despair are ours or could be ours. Reed writes with clarity and a sure knowing of how damn bad that adolescent life can be.
Cassie is the smart, formerly ugly “loser” who wants to change but then changes in a way she never imagined possible. We can only hope that as with the Lewis Carroll Alice, Cassie wakes up, wiser but no worse for wear.
Reed writes with an immediate, first person present tense tsunami of adolescent pain and confusion. Cassie’s story is one we understand but wish we didn’t have to. But because we do understand, we want to follow Cassie all the way through to the truly climactic end.
How easy it is for us to simply move onto a path that is wrong. At age 13, it is even easier, especially if the family system is broken, the child unmoored. Reading Reed’s story might shake up a reader, much as Go Ask Alice did me. But that book and Beautiful are so worth the ride.
Show More
Ask Alice, purportedly based on a teenager’s diary. The story is, as we all know now, a vivid cautionary tale about drugs and their rabbit hole allure. But really, the most frightening aspect of that novel was that I understood completely why “Alice” wanted to be other, different, new. Her need made sense. It could be me. It would be me if I didn’t watch out.
It took me a few years to get over the reading of that novel, but when I opened to the first page of the novel Beautiful by Amy Reed, I was right back in my young self, reading Go Ask Alice for the first time. From the first pages of Beautiful, I was shouting to myself, “No! Stop. Turn around. You don’t need Alex. Don’t go with Alex. Stop.”
But the main character Cassie has to follow that white rabbit down the hole. This is her journey. This is the hole she has to fall into, taking us with her. And we want to go. Not really. Okay, yes, we do. We have no choice. Her loneliness and despair are ours or could be ours. Reed writes with clarity and a sure knowing of how damn bad that adolescent life can be.
Cassie is the smart, formerly ugly “loser” who wants to change but then changes in a way she never imagined possible. We can only hope that as with the Lewis Carroll Alice, Cassie wakes up, wiser but no worse for wear.
Reed writes with an immediate, first person present tense tsunami of adolescent pain and confusion. Cassie’s story is one we understand but wish we didn’t have to. But because we do understand, we want to follow Cassie all the way through to the truly climactic end.
How easy it is for us to simply move onto a path that is wrong. At age 13, it is even easier, especially if the family system is broken, the child unmoored. Reading Reed’s story might shake up a reader, much as Go Ask Alice did me. But that book and Beautiful are so worth the ride.
Show Less
LibraryThing member stephxsu
13-year-old Cassie moves to Seattle from a small town and decides to embrace a darker, more grown-up lifestyle. However, falling into sex and drugs and being called beautiful by older boys doesn’t seem to ease the pain that Cassie carries inside of insecurities and a dislike for her dysfunctional
There is something disturbingly haunting about BEAUTIFUL. Debut novelist Amy Reed writes Cassie’s dark story in a prose that stuns and lingers.
BEAUTIFUL is similar to edgy movies like Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen in terms of content, but it is nearly poetic in its descriptions. Reed’s writing allows Cassie to distance herself from all situations she doesn’t want to be in, while simultaneously letting readers into Cassie’s mindset. The result both characterizes Cassie and effectively draws us into her frightening world.
My main issue with this book was the lack of information we were given on Cassie’s past, which would’ve acted as a comparison to and justification of Cassie’s current behavior. Throughout the book Cassie hints at an unhappy life in her old town—but is she a former good girl rebelling against her past? What is her motivation for falling in with the crowd she does? It is unclear to me what drove her to engage in the lifestyle she does, which made connecting with the story a little difficult.
Even so, BEAUTIFUL is a great read if you can stomach the material. It’s eye-opening, gut-churning, and exquisitely written.
Show More
family. As she becomes more and more wrapped up by her manipulative “best friend,” others’ ideas of her, and her own helplessness, there seems to be no way out for Cassie.There is something disturbingly haunting about BEAUTIFUL. Debut novelist Amy Reed writes Cassie’s dark story in a prose that stuns and lingers.
BEAUTIFUL is similar to edgy movies like Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen in terms of content, but it is nearly poetic in its descriptions. Reed’s writing allows Cassie to distance herself from all situations she doesn’t want to be in, while simultaneously letting readers into Cassie’s mindset. The result both characterizes Cassie and effectively draws us into her frightening world.
My main issue with this book was the lack of information we were given on Cassie’s past, which would’ve acted as a comparison to and justification of Cassie’s current behavior. Throughout the book Cassie hints at an unhappy life in her old town—but is she a former good girl rebelling against her past? What is her motivation for falling in with the crowd she does? It is unclear to me what drove her to engage in the lifestyle she does, which made connecting with the story a little difficult.
Even so, BEAUTIFUL is a great read if you can stomach the material. It’s eye-opening, gut-churning, and exquisitely written.
Show Less
LibraryThing member silenceiseverything
When I first started this book, I didn't really like it. It seemed like a rip-off of the film Thirteen. It also wasn't explaining itself very well. After the initial hurdles, I found myself enjoying it a little bit more. While I don't regret reading it, I wish that I had picked up this book at the
One thing that you can say about Beautiful is that it is a page-turner. I read this literally in two hours without moving from where I was sitting. It was extremely intense and gritty. So much that I found myself flinching with the certain situations that the characters have gone through (mainly Sarah's backstory). The book did not drag one bit and the "action" starts almost immediately. Yet, that right there was what worked against it.
The shift between Cassie's "good girl" status to her "bad girl" persona just went too quickly. One minute she's excited about being accepted into the popular smarties clique and the next minute she's hanging out with Alex doing drugs and having sex. I didn't get a clear picture of who Cassie was as a good girl. So it was a bit difficult to empathize with her at the beginning. Cassie wasn't all that fleshed out until she started rebelling. That was when all of her emotions just burst out and you understood her pain.
Cassie wasn't the only character that lacked developing. Delving into Alex's background could've been extremely interesting considering how different her and Cassie seem. Cassie was sort of thrust into this life while Alex seems like much more comfortable with it. It seems like that was the life she had always known. All of the characters had potential yet it seemed like it was wasted.
So, I thought Beautiful was just okay. Like I said, the book is an extremely fast read, yet that can be because it's pretty short (a little too short; it could've benefited from having about a hundred more pages to build up the main character). It's just that there was too much of a mystery when it came to Cassie that it was too hard for me to connect to her and because of that I was detached from the story. I still recommend this book, but I suggest you get it from the library.
Show More
library instead of purchasing it. One thing that you can say about Beautiful is that it is a page-turner. I read this literally in two hours without moving from where I was sitting. It was extremely intense and gritty. So much that I found myself flinching with the certain situations that the characters have gone through (mainly Sarah's backstory). The book did not drag one bit and the "action" starts almost immediately. Yet, that right there was what worked against it.
The shift between Cassie's "good girl" status to her "bad girl" persona just went too quickly. One minute she's excited about being accepted into the popular smarties clique and the next minute she's hanging out with Alex doing drugs and having sex. I didn't get a clear picture of who Cassie was as a good girl. So it was a bit difficult to empathize with her at the beginning. Cassie wasn't all that fleshed out until she started rebelling. That was when all of her emotions just burst out and you understood her pain.
Cassie wasn't the only character that lacked developing. Delving into Alex's background could've been extremely interesting considering how different her and Cassie seem. Cassie was sort of thrust into this life while Alex seems like much more comfortable with it. It seems like that was the life she had always known. All of the characters had potential yet it seemed like it was wasted.
So, I thought Beautiful was just okay. Like I said, the book is an extremely fast read, yet that can be because it's pretty short (a little too short; it could've benefited from having about a hundred more pages to build up the main character). It's just that there was too much of a mystery when it came to Cassie that it was too hard for me to connect to her and because of that I was detached from the story. I still recommend this book, but I suggest you get it from the library.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Bellydancer
After a move from a small town to the big city of Seattle, Cassie decides to change herself from the invisible 13 year old she is, to an out going, try anything, party chick. A girl, who takes drugs, has under age sex and frequents party after party. One choice changes everything and as her life
Likened to a modern-day Go Ask Alice the story falls short of the mark. Told in the first person, the dialogue between Cassie and her so called friend lacks realism, and although Reed portrays the sex/drug scenes throughout with conviction, they still fail to grab my attention.
Show More
balances on the knife-edge a hand of friendship is extended.Likened to a modern-day Go Ask Alice the story falls short of the mark. Told in the first person, the dialogue between Cassie and her so called friend lacks realism, and although Reed portrays the sex/drug scenes throughout with conviction, they still fail to grab my attention.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kissmeimgone
From the very first page I was drawn into this novel and couldn't put it down. Inspired by the movie 13, this book tells the story of Cassie, a 13 year old whose family moved to Seattle to start over new. Cassie, so desperately wanting to fit in at her new school, soon finds herself friends with
and it costs her the only genuine friend she's ever known. I definitely recommend this book to everyone who enjoys a good YA book.
Show More
the wrong crowd. Doing drugs and having sex, whatever she has to do to keep her reputation and friends. Before she knows it, she's spiralling out of controland it costs her the only genuine friend she's ever known. I definitely recommend this book to everyone who enjoys a good YA book.
Show Less
Pages
232