Beautiful People

Victoria is an artist living in France, who has been commissioned by Ingrid, a famous British film star, to paint her portrait as a wedding gift to her soon to be husband. Ingrid is so impressed with the final piece that she insists that she fly Victoria over to London to attend her wedding in person to hang the painting and present it to her during the wedding. There is a slight catch to this request though for Victoria, as Ingrid is engaged to Julian Draper, who just so happens to be an old friend of Victoria’s from her university days and someone who she really would rather not see ever again. While Victoria is scanning online articles about Julian she comes across a picture of Nick, someone she hasn’t seen in over 11 years and clearly has some history with.

The story is set over two timelines, with one timeline in the here and now and the other timeline starting back in 1999 where Victoria is leaving behind her life in Manchester and heading to London to join the Queens School of Architecture, prepared to reinvent everything about herself and leave her past firmly in the past in an effort to fit in with the trendy people she meets within her first few days.

The way the author crafts this group of characters throughout the book is absolute perfection. I felt like I knew them and that they were people in my own life. Even though the story is told predominantly from Victorias POV, the background and depth given to each character makes them all equally important to the story. I enjoyed this story and the writing so much I didn’t want it to end. I could have read this story even if it was double the length as the writing is so captivating and engaging.

There is a really strong message portrayed through this story that wasn’t really apparent until the last few chapters. A story of strength, realisation, and acceptance. I finished this book feeling empowered and deeply satisfied with how things had concluded. I would throughly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a dual timeline story with strong female characters. I hope this gets made into a short series or a film!

Wow i devoured this, the writing and story are incredible, the timelines flowing seamlessly. A really great book i could imagine the whole story vividly its so believable in its telling. Overall its excellent.

This book is fabulous. It moves backwards and forwards with ease and where I sometimes find this hard to keep up with it was easy with this book. A small cast of characters who have been through a lot. It almost made me regret not going to uni and I can see it being made into a film. The perfect book for a rainy autumn afternoon.

This could be up there as one of my favourite books of all time.

‘Beautiful People’ by Amanda Jennings has left me in a complete state of shock and I can already feel the weight of the book hangover this is going to leave. From start to finish this book was completely captivating, with multiple points of view and timelines to follow that beautifully weave together to create harrowing reveals. Once the initial glamour of this book and all of its extremely well written characters has worn off, you begin to see the darkness at the core. I genuinely haven’t felt as much emotion towards a book like this in a while, I felt such an attachment to these characters, I shed a few tears and was hanging onto every word - I didn’t want this to end!

As Victoria moves to London for University in the early 2000s, she wants to reinvent everything about herself and her past. In the present day, she is still dealing with the events that took place during her terms at uni, clearly never processing her traumas (which are initially unknown to us as readers) as she has to face her old friend group after 25 years. Obsession is her downfall. As this book develops, it becomes clear how Victoria’s state of mind is severely spiralling and you begin to trust her less and less. Just when I was ready to completely deem her as insane, the biggest, and most effective reveal is given - completely altering all perspectives. The distorting of Victoria’s narrative leaves you doubting right until the reveal, especially with all the small clues scattered throughout.

I’ve seen comparisons to ‘Saltburn’ when discussing this book and you can see how Victoria’s character has been influenced by Oliver’s behaviour - especially surrounding the way she speaks of her family. To me, Victoria is like how Oliver presents himself in front of others, and Mikey is his actions behind closed doors. I would love to see a film or tv production of this book but I just don’t think they would do justice to the imagery Jennings conjured in my head! Initially there were so many other books I was going to compare this too but now I’ve finished it, I don’t think anything else can compare. And honestly, I think ‘Beautiful People’ executes its ideas a lot stronger than ‘Saltburn’ or any other derivative materials did. Yes, shock factor comes into play but there is so much more than that beneath the surface.

‘Beautiful People’ is tender, heart breaking and full of obsession and revenge. My first book from Amanda Jennings and it’s left me desperate to read more.

Thank you to HQ and NetGalley for this arc !!

** All opinions are my own **