Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this early copy.

The blurb of this book intrigued me and though this isn't my usual genre, I decided to request this book as I fancied reading something different...this book was definitely unique!

I've read nothing like it before (so therefore it is original!) and the book is quirky and moving at times, exploring something that I can relate to - what it means to feel like to be an outsider, never quite at home in some environments.

Though some of the writing wasn't easy to follow and the pace was slow at first but moved on as I read further, it is sharp and intriguing. I liked the way it made me think about identity, belonging and being human.

Would recommend to anyone looking for something quirky and original to read.

This was such an interesting read. I loved the idea of alienation and how that feeling changes as you get older but it can often still be there.
Adina is a fantastic character, innocent but determined to seek her own path.
The book felt like it would be good for anYA audience as well as adults.

When I was offered this as an arc I found the concept really interesting and right up my street. I found the reality very confusing. I didn’t really understand the concept or what was going on. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.

Thank you Vintage books for the arc in exchange for an honest review! 💜 4.5 ⭐

Adina was born at the moment when Voyager 1 was launched into space. She knew she was different from early childhood, and when a fax machine arrived in her home she realised her mission is clear: report on the oddities of humankind.

Adina's perspective on the world was intriguing, endearing, sometimes a bit bizarre, but always gentle. Her observations through life made for such an interesting read, her voice unique and enchanting.

"There's a reason it's called alienated. Because I am an alien, I am alone. When you are alone, there is no one to tell: There is a bird whose call sounds like hoo-where-la-hoo! Or, there's a spider landing on your head. So you tell yourself. There's a spider landing on my head. I should move."

I think if you enjoy books by Sayaka Murata such as Convenience Store Woman, or something like Mina's Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa, you'd really enjoy this. It's kind of weird-girl fiction, but quite an innocent view of the world (unlike some of the content in Murata's books, but some of the character qualities felt similar to me).

I read this in one sitting, such a pleasure to read. Thank you again to the publisher for the arc.

"The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon."

"To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads - what could be more human?"

I just... didn't get it. I don't even really know what to say. I'm happy to read books that are a bit quirky and out there but this was just a miss for me.

Review not posted anywhere else.

Unfortunately this book wasn't me. DNF at 5%. I found it really difficult to get to grips with what was going on and the characters. I felt myself skimming through without taking the information.

Ok so first off 4.5 stars for this. I’m not a sci-fi reader so when I was offered this arc I was a bit wary. However, this book was so well written and in my opinion it’s a story of life according to Adina who believes she is an alien sent to report back to her planet human behaviours and she does this via a fax machine that her mom found and brought it into the home. It’s a story of life, love and heartbreak and I was definitely here for it. Adina reminded me of some of my favourite fmc’s such as Sally Diamond and Eleanor Olyphant. Adina had the same childlike qualities and also speaks as she finds. Do I believe that Adina is an alien? Nope but I do think she sees the world differently than others and honestly believes she is other worldly

I don’t know if I should admit this but I thought I was picking up a sci-fi novel once I realised it wasn’t. I am actually enjoying it very much.
The novel tells up of Adina who is born the moment Voyager one is launched into space. She grows up with a strong feeling that she is different. At times this feeling is so strong that she feels that she is an alien left on earth to report on the oddities of humankind to her alien overlords.
we watch as goes up and deals with the difficulties of interacting with people outside her family, particularly at school
I fully empathise with the difficulty appearing popular in a girls school
I did spend quite a lot of time while through this novel. I was wondering whether we were going to discover if she was an alien or not and I’m not revealed that in this review.
The novel is witty and a very enjoyable read the author has a nice clear prose style I Very much enjoyed
I particularly enjoyed some of the paragraphs, for example “What’s the story implied by wearing an animal print? Lookit I’ve murdered a cheetah now . I will wear a skin to Pilates.” I thought this exact thought many time perhaps I’m an alien.!
As a person who identifies as neuro diverse, I felt that I understood quite a lot of of the main characters difficulties fitting in and feeling like she was observing other people from a distance to try and learn from them
The book has been published already in the USA, so there’s lots of reviews on Goodreads already
I originally copy on NetGalley UK.
In return for an unbiased review The book is published on the 27th of March 2025 by random house UK vintage.
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, StoryGraph, Goodreads, and my book blog bionicSarahSbooks.wordpress.com after publication will also appear on Amazon UK

The quirky premise (girl sent from another planet to report back on life on Earth) concerned me as I'm not a huge fan of fantastical elements or sci-fi, but I wanted to read it as it was on the Tournament of Books list.

Turns out I loved Adina and I‘d have been one of those holding up the ‘I believe you‘ placards at her readings.

This can be read as a metaphor / analogy or just enjoyed as a straightforward story.

I really wanted to enjoy this book - and I'm sure it's definitely a case of 'it's me, not you' as most reviewers have loved it - but I just found it like wading through mud. After the first chapter, I found myself skimming the paragraphs; it just didn't grab me until towards the very end, when I just found it incredibly sad.

I do hope it does well as I think it will be a very special read for some.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK and Vintage for the eARC of this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

This is an unusual book and quite hard to classify. It is not what I would call sci fi and it is not what I expected from the blurb.

When I started it I really was not sure what was going on but I was drawn in and the more I read, the more I enjoyed it. Adina is an interesting character and her observations are usually very funny but also can also give a person pause for thought. I am still not entirely sure what was going on, is Adina an actual space alien? It didnt matter to me though because I just enjoyed reading about her life and the choices she made. The book actually reminded me a bit of books like "Hello God, It's Me , Margaret" but, as I say, perhaps I am missing something deep.

The advance copy I had gave the replies to the faxes as simply ".", a full stop. I don't know if that was deliberate or if some words were missing. There were also some letters missing which occasionally stopped my reading flow, In Adina's flat, for example I spent some time wondering what the replace was, it is of course fireplace.

i would recommend this book as a story about a woman throughout her life, with the alien side just a hook to hang the story on.

Delightful. A story filled with charm and mystery. Is Adina truly human? Perhaps not. She believes she’s come from a faraway planet to study Earth and so, sends reports back to the ‘Shining Ones’ via a fax machine rescued from a bin.
She graces her environment like an ethereal being and makes this story enchanting.
It’s a truly different kind of ‘sci fi’ tale and I loved it.
I believe this book will be read far and wide and will appeal to all ages.

This book. Ugh I’m so frustrated by it! Adina believes herself to be from another planet. She sends faxes to her higher ups & attends ‘night school’ with them. All the while she’s just trying to be a normal girl.

Okay, the bad. I found the first half of this book monotonous & repetitive. Whack a solid 50 pages outta there. She’s an alien! On and on. It’s been 84 years etc etc

However!!! The second half I thought was excellent. Extremely moving & tender. A really beautiful portrait of loneliness and belonging.

So that’s why I’m frustrated. A true tale of two halves. At least the good half was at the end and that’s the memory I’m left with.

Beautyland
By Marie-Helene Bertino

This is one of those books that I put off reviewing because of anxiety over not being able to do it justice. I almost let it pass me by until a friend, who knows me better than most people do, demanded that I read it because it has my name written all over it. From the first page I recognised Adina. I know her and I understand her because she is me. Yes, I am also an alien from another planet, trying to make contact with my people.

Anyone who grew up feeling out of place and operating on a different system to everyone else will surely resonate with this. The narrative voice that Bertino has given Adina contains many clues to who she is, and why she thinks the way she does. She speaks of her life in parables, in abstraction, almost in listicles, you can almost imagine the bullet points. Her frank and dispassionate pronouncements on human behaviour are astute, considered and funny, sometimes painfully so.

This book touched my heart in so many ways. My usual stoic reading face broke so many times, in surprise, in empathy, in sympathy and in close to home humour. If there is a word or phrase to describe the feeling you get in your sternum when an orchestra arrives at the zenith of its piece, that's how the last few chapters made me feel.

I love Adina, I love cookie mother and I love the way her life trajectory lines up with Voyager 1's journey from Earth, through our solar system and beyond. A fabulous read, especially for those of us who don't quite feel of this world.

Publication Date: 27th March 2025

Thanks to #Vintage for gifting me an ARC

Beautyland by M.H. Bertino is a coming-of-age story wrapped in an otherworldly premise—Adina is an alien (or so she believes), sent to Earth to determine if it's worth saving. But instead of first contact and cosmic revelations, she gets something far more terrifying: growing up.

Adina drifts through her childhood and adolescence like she's watching from the outside—always on the verge of something, always holding herself back. She’s relatable in the way loneliness is, in the way wanting but not quite accepting feels. Her story unfolds in tender, offbeat snapshots, full of humor and longing, a balance Bertino wields masterfully.

This book reads like a quiet ache, the kind you don’t notice until it lingers. It’s about belonging (or not), understanding (or pretending to), and the strangeness of simply existing. And isn’t that, in some way, the most alien feeling of all?

Some books linger long after you finish them, and I think "Beautyland" is one of them for me. It’s quiet, introspective, and deeply observant - the kind of novel that slowly seeps into you rather than demanding your attention. It took me a little while to settle into its rhythm, but by the second half, I was completely taken in.

The novel follows Adina Giorno, a girl born at the exact moment Voyager 1 is launched into space. From the start, she senses she is different - she possesses knowledge of a distant planet and, with the arrival of a fax machine, begins sending transmissions to her extraterrestrial relatives. As she moves through life, navigating love, loneliness, and the contradictions of human existence, she continues reporting back, searching for connection and understanding.

I loved Adina. She feels so fully realised, so singular yet familiar, that I know I’ll be thinking about her for a long time. I went into this expecting more sci-fi elements, but I wouldn’t necessarily categorise it that way. I think it’s best to approach the book without any fixed ideas of what it’s going to be - it unfolds in its own way, at its own pace, and you'd probably have a better reading experience.

It is incredibly slow, and I think if you don’t enjoy introspective narratives, it might not be for you. But if you do, it’s the kind of book that invites rereading, which is why I’ve already bought a copy of the new paperback.

4.25/5 ⭐

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange of my honest review.

Adina sees the world in a different way, hearing and reacting to noises that nobody else notices. At night she finds herself in a virtual classroom while sleeping where she is versed in the knowledge of her people and planet who want to know about humankind. She communicates her observations though an old fax machine. We follow her living through the space race from the 60s onwards. I found this story to be strange but compelling.

What a beautiful, heart-wrenching book. This genuinely made my heart hurt with yearning for the past and how simultaneously beautiful and painful the human experience can be.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino is definitely a literary fiction novel with sci-fi elements; if you’re going into this expecting it to be a full-blown sci-fi, you’re going to be disappointed. We follow Adina, who believes herself to be an alien sent to earth to observe humans and report on their behaviour via a fax machine back to her people. At its heart, though, this novel is about being and feeling different, and as a neurodivergent person that hit REALLY hard. Adina’s experiences are so relatable and multifaceted, and she’s such an interesting character to follow and root for. I’ll definitely be revisiting this one in the future and am really looking forward to getting myself a physical copy to highlight the hell out of.

Overall, I would highly, highly recommend Beautyland to fans of literary fiction who want an introspective, character-driven story with light speculative elements. This is definitely going to end up being of my favourite books of the year.

Within a few pages, this became a DNF for me. The writing style is choppy and very detached - I felt nothing but was just told stuff. It's written as scenes rather than chapters but what does "Adina: noble Giorno: day" as a scene even mean? I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting from this book - but it was very different to what I had imagined. The blurb intrigued me, but I am not sure the execution of the idea lived up to what the blurb promised.
This was very slow paced and while charming, funny and sweet at times, it was also quite plodding in mundane in other places. Therefore the pacing was a little off. And there were lots of things that didn't really make much sense? Not sure if that was because the premise was a little over my head or I just wasn't understanding what the author was trying to portray. To me, it lacked any real purpose or direction.
The ending was simultaneously dragged out, and yet far too abrupt! I can't really explain that any more without giving spoilers.
Overall, a very strange book.