Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined by Danielle Younge-Ullman Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“My demon is you. My best and worst is about you: how I need you and fear for you, how I fear for myself if I lose you, how I have let myself be defined by you.”- Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined, Danielle Younge-Ullman

Then

Ingrid traveled all over Europe with her opera star mother, Margot-Sophia. Life was beautiful and bright, and every day soared with music. 

Now

Ingrid is on a summertime wilderness survival trek for at-risk teens: addicts, runaways, and her. She's fighting to survive crushing humiliations, physical challenges that push her to her limits, and mind games that threaten to break her. 

Then

When the curtain fell on Margot-Sophia's singing career, they buried the past and settled into a small, painfully normal life. But Ingrid longed to let the music soar again. She wanted it so much that, for a while, nothing else mattered. 

Now

Ingrid is never going to make it through this summer if she can't figure out why she's here, what happened to Margot-Sophia, and why the music really stopped.

Does anyone else feel exhausted after typing, saying, or even thinking both that title combined with the author's name? I feel like I need to say it super quickly and all in one word- everythingbeatutifulisnotruinedbydanielleyoungeullman. Even the acronym isn't easier to say- EBINR. I mean, I do kind of like it, since when I read it I think of the Emcee from Cabaret- "So life is disappointing, forget it. In here, life is beautiful!". Don't really know why, maybe because I've been listening to the soundtrack from the movie a lot lately. I'm going to avoid typing this title as much as I can while writing this review.

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I enjoyed it. And on the other, I didn't. The thing is, I really liked how Younge-Ullman really seemed to be trying to take common YA cliches, many of the ones I personally hate and turn them on their heads. I liked that the "villainous" characters were the hippie/free spirit type, and enjoyed a lot of the shots Younge-Ullman took at them. I also liked how a lot of the bully characters weren't who you'd expect to be bullies, and I loved Andreas, Ingrid's stepfather. So many times stepparents are shown in a negative light, especially stepfathers, and I loved how he treated Ingrid and her mother. 

In fact, the most interesting parts in this book was Ingrid and her mother. I wish the entire book had focused around that relationship, and wished the book followed her travels around Europe or them trying to live a normal life after their bohemian opera life ended. I wish this book wasn't centered in a wilderness survival camp; hell, I wish she had never transferred out of that public school. I love books that follow their main characters after some dramatic event has happened, when they are just trying to live a normal life. 

However, I feel like as much as Younge-Ullman is trying to put new twists on old cliches, she still falls back on them a lot. Especially when it comes to the characters in the camp, and even her main character. I mean, the gay guy, Seth, had your typical ultra-religious parents who wouldn't accept him backstory, another character, Jin, had the usual Asian tiger-parents, and honestly her backstory reminded me a ton of Calling Maggie May (one of the Anonymous books I've written about before). The twins reminded me of Zack and Cody and had kind of a pointless presence. Hell, even Peace-Bob made me think of a cliche. Now, normally I would appreciate a good hippie parody, but Peace-Bob was way too over the top and not subtle at all. Half the time I thought he was joking. And I was also annoyed with how Younge-Ullman frequently described him as being overweight and hairy. I kind of feel bad for overweight guys. Girls who are plus-sized are celebrated in YA lit now, but overweight men are always portrayed as being either dicks or predators. It doesn't really seem right to me. The only characters that really interested me were Ally and Melissa, but neither seemed very well-developed.

Anyway, Ingrid is also kind of cliche. She's your typical "sarcastic" and "snarky" main female character with an over inflated vocabulary who used to go to a special school for special kids and is apparently a music genius and blah blah blah. I was torn between liking her narrative and getting really, really annoyed by it. I admit, when I first saw the letters I broke out into cold sweats, getting bad flashbacks from Mosquitoland, but I ended up snapping out of it. 

Even the writing was hard for me to put my finger on. It was pretty, sure, but it also reeked of pretension and made me think that this author takes herself too seriously. Again, the only thing about this book that I felt was truly original was her mother and her stepfather. This book should have thrown out everything else- the special school, Isaac, the wilderness camp, Tavik, all of that- and focused solely on just Ingrid and her mother, and perhaps her stepfather. They were interesting, real, and I enjoyed learning more about those parts. It got to the point where it was hard for me to resist flipping past the camp and the romance to get to those flashbacks. 

I think this book really felt more like a movie or a teen soap than a book. The dialogue felt awkward and unrealistic, the comebacks felt like they'd sound better in person than they do in print, and everything felt so overdramatic and fairytale. It was hard for me to find even a bit of realism in everything. I think the parts with Isaac highlight this the most. Seriously, they met while locked in a closet in middle school, and then when he does transfer to her school (totally gorgeous now, by the way) he gets pissed at her because of a look he thinks he saw in her eyes. Give me a break. Now that I think about it, this book reminds me of an unintentional parody of those teen soaps. I say unintentional, because, again, I think the author takes herself way too seriously. Her efforts in both creating drama and humor come off forced, and the only things that even remotely felt like real emotions were, again, the bits with Ingrid and her mother.

So, those are my thoughts on everythingbeautifulisnotruinedbydanielleyoungullman. I'd be interested to hear what other people have to say about this book, because I confess that the only reason why I even picked it up was because of a recommendation from BooksandLala (not sure why, since I don't always have the same thoughts/taste in books as she does). By the way, did you notice that it's super trendy now to set books in survival/outdoor education camps for troubled teens? Kind of weird and specific for an idea, but hey, I kinda like it. 

7 out of 10