Beautiful World, Where Are You: A Novel

Wow. I was so excited about this book; I love Sally Rooney. But I found this book truly disappointing, and in fact, I'm having trouble finishing it. Rather than being complex, the characters are one-dimensional and unlikeable; and it's difficult to build a book around people like those in the book . I'm hoping her next book is back to form.

So the book's two main characters, Alice and Eileen, are best of friends but live in different Irish locations. Both involved with men, Felix and Simon, who they wonder are worthy of a long-term commitment. The book contains e mail exchanges between them and in addition, the author's narrative of events including blow by blow description of the sex between Alice and Felix and Eileen and Simon. Towards the end of the book, all four get together at Alice's house and is reminiscent of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff when Burton and Taylor went at each other.So far so good. I was eagerly awaiting the last chapters to find out the eventual outcome of both relationships. What we got In two short chapters, are the women's e mail to each other TWELVE MONTHS LATER to say all is honky dory. What a cop out!. All the bitching and moaning , all the pretentious dialogue about the world they live in, all the drama at Alice's house and poof , in twelve months , all is well without explanations. What a waste

Very repetitive, boring and pedestrian at best. I wish I had stopped reading after the first few pages, but kept hoping it would get better. It didn't.

WTF did I just waste my time reading? Normal People was AMAZING, this — which was HYPED to the hilt — was incredibly boring. A bunch of LONG email messages back and forth between the main characters who are beyond bland and unlikable. Of course, you need not like characters but they should be interesting, distinct and unique. I kept waiting for something, *anything* to happen. I preordered the book and that was a mistake. Should have waited for reviews and a sample of the book instead of reading sight unseen. If you must read this, get it from the library. Hard pass.

Couldn’t have been more disappointed. The apparently autobiographical story was self-indulgent with characters that were inconsistent and largely unlikeable. The redundancy of the cycle of mistakes and recriminations became actually boring. The “happy ending” was a forced and at least partially unbelievable.

This author just rambles on and on about the most boring details of ordinary things, had to skip page after page of nonsence. I have been trying to read this book for the last week on page 95 of 341 and I'm just giving up since nothing she writes gets my attention and I read alot of books. Sadly the reviews didn't reflect how bad this book is and I didn't know I only had 7 days to return the Kindle book or I would already have done that. Best advice is don't waste your $16.23 on this Beautiful World, Where Are You because it isn't beautiful at all!

This book reads like a teenager's diary. Fifty Shades of Dismay. Don't bother.

Miserable book..unpleasant throughout. It was agony to observe the emotionally sick young characters spend so much selfish energy on meaningless sexual thoughts and encounters laced with pot and drugs and no moral boundaries None of them reached out to make life better for others. Self absorption proved they were unbalanced and unfit to raise the child who was the the result of out of wedlock pregnancy. I am sorry I wasted money to buy this book and I do NOT recommend it . It is sad to think that many young people will read this book and think that this is a role model to develop meaningful friendships and loving partnerships. It is low trash. I am forced to rate it simply to submit mid this review.

Sally Rooney’s latest novel is beautifully packaged - she writes well. But to what end? A tale about four characters who spend their lives, when not arguing about the nature of beauty, seemingly unable to make any meaningful decisions. All four are flawed, and extremely irritating. There is no joy or laughter in their lives. They speculate about doomed humanity like teenagers, though they are supposed to be grown up. They try to pretend they are “ordinary”, when they are anything but. Unless that’s what passes for ordinary in Dublin. In that case, poor old Ireland. So, a shiny carapace with nothing worthwhile inside. The, probably inevitable, TV adaptation will have to work very hard not to be extremely boring.

I was intensely disappointed by this one. At around the halfway mark I considered DNF'ing but decided to push on, and let me tell you - it was a tough slog to finish. This book is lacklustre in every sense of the word, something is missing. It doesn't have the same magic that Normal People has. After seeing droves of 5-star reviews, I figured this was probably a 'me' problem and not a problem with the book, but then I also feel like there are so many Sally Rooney apologists who will defend her work to the heavens and believe she is immune to any kind of critique (and I don't just mean the usual complaints about the blatant non-use of speech marks). Despite being very character driven, the characters are highly unlikable (this isn't quirky anymore, it's just kind of annoying) and they lack any emotional depth or emotional intelligence. It's like reading about 4 moody Tumblr teenagers with no self-awareness. A stronger sense of place would have really elevated this book but it was largely half-baked. The letters between narrators felt like space filler, veering off into topics that aren't pertinent to anything in the book (politics, the Bronze Age????). I'd struggle to recommend this to anyone.

I’m not sure where to even begin to be honest. I try not to buy into hype with things, but this truly is a case of the emperor’s new clothes. The writing is nothing special, I’ve read so many excellent books this year, detransition, baby, Paul takes the form of a mortal girl, her body and other parties and all men want to know to name a few and the writing in this book pales horribly in comparison; it is nothing more than perfunctory. The pacing is awful, the boring emails are filler and more filler and the characters seem to have been rehashed from her previous two books.Rooney has a penchant for writing pretentious and self-obsessed, but this book takes that to another (painful) level. I will admit it was a real grind for me to finish, but I just about managed it. I just assume it is trendy to say she’s brilliant, to take pictures of the book for the gram and to show you’re current and on the pulse- but it’s a tedious, meandering novel with not even a sliver of a saving grace.

After reading normal people, and conversations with friends I was really looking forward to this. I’m currently reading a super heavy book and wanted to use this as a light read before bed. Unfortunately I ended up completely disappointed, as for some reason they’ve decided to remove speech marks (basic punctuation), which completely ruins the flow of the book. Very disappointed.

Not quite sure where to begin, only that I very nearly didn't bother to read this novel because of the relentless hype around it. I find it all so toxic. To books, to writers, readers too. I was not a great fan of Normal People, thought it okay, but hyped. BWWAY is altogether different -- delicious, clever, wry, witty -- and left me with that rare tipsy feeling I sometimes get on finishing the book. I enjoyed it *enormously*.