Trigger Warning: Homophobia, suicide, self harm, teen pregnancy.
Be aware this review has spoilers, but if you want to read this book, I recommend reading this review, because the spoilers aren't too big, and they are sort of a warning for you.
Something Beautiful sounded like such an impactful, important novel. The synopsis painted this book out to be a masterpiece, and that's what I expected. Sadly, it was definitely not. It had the potential, the beautiful storyline idea, but it just turned out to be constructed messily, which is why I can only rate it 2.5 stars, because I enjoyed reading it, but technically it wasn't that great.
My main issue was the writing. It was the definition of telling and not showing, which was very irritating. There was no forshadowing, no analyzing for the reader, just telling us, " She's sad, she was angry.... she was annoyed because..." See what I mean? There was no flavor, no texture to the writing. It was all just very flat. Not only that, but the pacing was incredibly fast. I love fast paced books, I live for them, but when there is a lack of development, that's when I have a problem. with it. So much was happening, and it had very little reason to happen. For example, so many issues were tackled, but they were just glazed over, and had no significance. Cutting, depression, death, homophobia, suicide, LGBT+ positivity, anxiety, and pregnancy, were all part of Something Beautiful, but only homophobia, LGBT+ positivity, and maybe death should have been dealt with. That would have made this book seem less scattered and all over the place.
The characters were also a bit inconsistent to me. Cord, to be exact. Declan described Cord as this funny, beautiful, strong girl, and I really only got pretty and strong out of that. Cord didn't say anything funny. We were just told multiple times that she was hilarious and fun, when she isn't. I can recognize humor, even if it's not my sort of humor, couldn't find it then.
But, Cord wasn't all negative. Her reactions to traumatic situations were all very reasonable and real. Her reaction to Declan when she was in high school made so much sense. I mean, if I was her, I probably would have been extremely angry too. Yet later she grows and is supportive of Declan, and that was a beautiful aspect, which I wish could have lingered a little longer, because that as a real strong point.
Declan was not a bad character actually. To me, he was more consistent than Cord. The only critique I really have for him is the amount of times he teared up or cried. I'm not trying to feed into gender roles or anything, but lets be real, most guys do not cry in front of girls as much as he did. It was very endearing and sweet, and showed that guys can cry, but at the same time it would have been even more impactful for the main character to catch him crying and not expect to be found. It would have added so much more intensity and surprise. Some situations like Cord's suicide attempt made complete sense, anyone would be crying, but when he sees Cord after 8 months to a year, he cries, and I just can't imagine that happening. That's just me though.
The fluidity of sexuality was amazing to read, and that's one of the reasons I found Declan to be the stronger character. His confusion about if he was gay or not was well done, and when he figures out he is bisexual, it made so much sense. He identified himself as queer, but I interpreted him as bi, but that was because he was struggling with his sexuality. His journey was what I wanted more of, but sadly this turned out to be more of a love story and focused on Cord, which was frustrating.
Finally, the ending made me so angry. I had to contain myself from throwing my kindle on the ground because my mother was sitting next to me driving. It was just so unnecessary! Like really???????? It was glazed over, and Declan's grief was hardly even explored! I feel the author just threw it in for shock value, and I'm not a fan of using death as shock value, because that is an extremely painful experience, and when it isn't given time to develop or depicted well, it's just annoying. The end honestly should have been edited out, because it was messy as heck.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend Something Beautiful because the quality of it was not the best. The way suicide and depression was brushed over really rubbed me the wrong way, which is partially why I couldn't rate this higher. I appreciate what this book tried to do, it just wasn't very successful in what it tried to do in my opinion. Maybe for others this is impactful, but for me, it just didn't click.