Review of Beautiful World Where Are You

★★.5☆☆ (the half-star unicode symbol isn't working for me 😭)

This book is pretty mid. The writing style is strangely homogeneous considering there's dialogue between different characters. The themes of the book seem pretty overt and explicit to me, but it is integrated cleanly into the story. The plot is about 4 pretty depressed people finding romance and the "beautiful world" that has been absent in their lives up to that point. But this theme isn't a super big focus of the novel as interpersonal dramas are the main source of tension. I think this book is paced poorly, as for a lot of it nothing much happens. Even when things do happen, they aren't that tense. I feel like a lot of the book was building up to a big conflict that was just quickly rushed in at the end. The characters are also confusing in their motivation (noticeably their lack of it) and their inconsistency. I think this book is a bit too verbose on unnecessary stuff (there is a lot of sex) but manages to need more length to tie up more ends. Overall, this book is a pretty bland book describing four characters trying to escape their depression/ennui.