Thank you to The Write Reads and Penguin Platform for having me on the blog tour for What Beauty There Is by Cory Anderson! Read below to find out about the author, the book as well as my first impressions.

About the Author

Twitter: @coryanderwrites

Website: https://coryanderson.us/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coryanderwrites/

Amazon UK Link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Beauty-There-Cory-Anderson/dp/0241441714/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=what+beauty+there+is&qid=1616251655&sr=8-1

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44779579-what-beauty-there-is?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=cy9S5ruE50&rank=1

About the Book

Winter. The sky is dark. It is cold enough to crack bones.

Jack Morton has nothing left. Except his younger brother, Matty, who he’d do anything for. Even die for. Now with their mother gone, and their funds quickly dwindling, Jack needs to make a choice: lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison. He chooses the money.

Ava Bardem lives in isolation, a life of silence. For seventeen years her father has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one. Trust no one. Now Victor Bardem is stalking the same money as Jack. When he picks up Jack’s trail, Ava must make her own wrenching choice: remain silent or help the brothers survive.

Choices. They come at a price.

First Impressions.

I may have only read the first two chapters of this book, but I can already tell it’s going to pack an emotional punch. The first chapter alone had me tearing up, and I didn’t know anything about the characters/their backstories etc. The book itself is incredibly aesthetically pleasing, each chapter is headed by tree branches and opens with a paragraph in italics which I *think* is another characters POV.

After being dealt an emotional hand in the first chapter Jack has some hard choices to make, he is now the sole carer for his younger brother Matty, who has no idea what’s happened, or the consequences that may arise from it. As an older sibling, I found myself feeling for Jack (yes, even after only two chapters) the decisions he had to make were incredibly hard, and solely done out of love and needing to protect his younger brother.

The authors writing style isn’t overly descriptive, but she shows the realities of Jack and Matty’s lives, the stark amount of food and almost non existent money. I can definitely see this being a book where I will get overly invested in the characters and their outcomes.

I’ve read the other reviews for this on the tour and can safely say I will definitely be reading the full book sometime soon, I actually found it very hard to put down after the second chapter and feel, if I had had the time, I could have easily polished it off in one emotional sitting.