This Beautiful Life - book giveaway

[RachelMumsnet]

In February we gave away 50 copies of This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman. If you received a copy, we'd love to hear what you thoughts, so please post up on this thread.

Read more about This Beautiful Life.

The book is well written, quite descriptive and provides great insight of how a family as a unit and individual cope with a threat to that unit. The font was a bit small though and maybe I need glasses :)

I really enjoyed the book. It was written very well, was very engaging. I didnt want to put it down, as wanted to know what would happen next, and if the situation would resolve itself at the end. It brings up the big issue of morals. All of the family members are likeable and it was interesting seeing their views on what happened/how they coped with it/and as a family how they dealt with it

I also have this book and am currently still reading it. It is very good so far - I will return and post my thoughts when I have read it all.

I enjoyed this book, it kept me gripped all the way through and it was interesting how a fairly small incident could have such a devastating effect on the family. My one criticism though is that I found the ending rather disappointing, there wasn't really a conclusion to the family's situation and it just felt as though it wasn't a proper ending. I would have liked to have known more about whether they got back to a normal family life, whether the parents stayed together etc.
I'm glad I read it but probably wouldn't read it again - I passed it on to the charity shop.
Thanks for picking me though, I always like reading new books!

Thanks for the book, I'm always eager to try different authors and subject matter. I loved reading all about the different characters and how the situation affected each of them individually, as well as the family unit as a whole. However, I have to agree that I found the ending a bit disappointing, which was a shame.

Apologies it's taken me so long to come back to you on this. I enjoyed it - I thought it was very well-written and the characterisation was great. Unfortunately, I just didn't think it was realistic. It may be because I was reading it with the Steubenville case as the backdrop but, even without that, I don't think the son would have been as vilified as he was by his school and the whole community. It would have been Daisy who would have got the opprobrium, not him.

So the whole thing just didn't hang together for me

Hello. I'm so sorry I've only just got around to finishing this book after starting it ages ago and getting distracted by other things.

I'm afraid I found it quite disappointing and a little tedious. I thought it was contrived and I found it very difficult indeed to empathise, let alone sympathise, with any of the characters. It was after the style of The Slap which I also didn't like (well I hated it actually, this was much better).

I am very very grateful for getting the free book though, thank you very much. If anyone reads this who didn't get a free copy and would like to read it please PM me and I'll happily post it to you.