Book Summary of Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
From the author of Daisy Darker and Rock, Paper, Scissors, Beautiful Ugly is another twisty thriller about a writer who thinks he keeps seeing his missing wife on the tiny Scottish island he’s on to write his book. For psychological thriller readers, this is a great book until literally the very end.
This summary is just to remind you of what happened in the book before you read the full book review. If you haven’t read the whole book yet, I highly recommend it for a dark thriller. The summary obviously does not capture the suspenseful atmosphere or creepy vibes that really shine in the book.
Chapter 1
An author, Grady Green, gets a call from his publishing team that his book is a New York Times bestseller as he’s waiting for his wife, Alice, an investigative journalist, who’s late. He calls Abby, who’s not far from home, with the news, but during the call she slams on the brakes for a woman she sees lying in the road. Leaving the phone on speaker, Grady hears Abby get out of the car, silence for some time, and then someone breathing who’s not Abby.
When Grady gets to her abandoned car, there’s no sign of Abby or a woman. In the car is a gift box with a doll that looks like Abby with its mouth sewn shut, and the driver door is still open.
One Year Later
Chapters 2-3
Abby is still missing, and all the police were able to find is the jacket she had on down the road, and that she withdrew large sums of money leading up to the disappearance. Grady had to sell the house and belongings, and is now living in a one star hotel in London with writer’s block when his agent Kitty, also Abby’s godmother, meets with him to start writing again. She offers him a writing cabin on a remote Scottish island she inherited from the late author Charles Whittaker, who also had books on the New York Times Bestseller list.
Grady makes the drive with his dog Colombo, and has to wait for the small ferry that only comes a few times a week. At first, the tall woman driving the ferry isn’t going to let Grady on because visitors aren’t allowed on the small island this time of year, but allows him on when he explains he’s staying at Charles’ cabin. On the ferry ride over, Grady is positive he sees a woman who looks exactly like his wife amongst the other people on the ferry.
Chapters 4-5
When Grady goes to find the woman, he can’t find anyone fitting the description and decides he’s imagining things because he doesn’t sleep much these days. After getting off the ferry, Grady notices an odd map of the island with peculiar names and a triangle labeled you are not here. The ferry woman, Sandy, who happens to be the sheriff as well, offers to drive Grady to Charles’ cabin, The Edge, which literally sits on the cliff edge.
Grady thinks this is the most beautiful island he’s ever seen when he thinks he sees his wife in the village again. But when he gets out of Sandy’s truck, a woman named Meera has a similar coat to his wife, but is clearly not her. During the rest of the drive, Sandy mentions people always see ghosts here before giving Grady a compass and a map because his phone doesn’t work on the island.
Chapters 6-7
After Sandy leaves him to walk the remainder of the way, Grady admires the Redwood trees, planted by the original founder of the island, and finds a nice cabin right on the edge of the sea cliff. According to Kitty’s email, the key is under the mat, but Grady finds the door unlocked with no key under the mat.
When he enters the small but nice cabin, he notices it’s clean even though no body’s lived here for years, so he figures Kitty must have had it prepped for him. Grady’s dog starts scratching at a loose floorboard, and Grady pulls it up to find a skeleton hand and Charles manuscript for his last unpublished book. Convincing himself the bones are fake, he stays up into the night to finish the manuscript, and thinks it’s one of the best books he’s ever read.
Chapter 8 One Week Before She Disappears-Abby
Feeling trapped in her marriage, Abby goes to see a therapist, and tells the therapist she’s been lying about everything in her marriage. Abby thinks back to meeting her husband on a flight to New York City, and hitting it off right away because she always had a thing for writers. But now Abby thinks he doesn’t trust her and knows she’s lying.
Chapters 9-10
Grady decides to walk into the village and passes a phone booth that says it’s out of order. When he stops in Cora Christie’s general store, he buys supplies and mails a letter to Kitty. As they’re finishing up, Grady hears a walkie talkie going off, and Cora hurries him out of the store locking the door behind him.
On his walk back, the phone in the booth starts ringing, and when he picks it up he hears Abby asking for help. After the line cuts off, he figures he must have imagined it from lack of sleep because the phone is now dead. After getting back to the cabin, he falls asleep to be woken up by Sandy knocking asking him to come to dinner.
Chapters 11-12
Grady has dinner with Sandy and her sister Midge who live in a mini castle they call the House on the Hill. Midge tries to ask Grady about his books, but he keeps changing the subject because he’s thinking about how he told Kitty Charles manuscript was his instead.
Then, when crime is mentioned, Midge mentions that a year ago a woman came over on the ferry with other tourists before she vanished, Sandy is sure she didn’t take the ferry back to the mainland, but nobodies seen her on the island. Then, shortly after, a man’s body missing a hand washed up on the beach.
Chapter 13 One Week Before She Disappeared
While talking to the therapist, Abby thinks back to how her mother forced her to take piano lessons, but the piano teacher ended up sexually abusing her. Her mother walked in on it one day, and knocked the man out with a vase before sending Abby to her room. No one ever spoke of it again, but her mom eventually sent Abby away.
Chapters 14-15
At dinner, Grady hears a pounding sound that seems like someone trying to get out of a locked room, but Sandy and Midge says it’s just their mother. Eventually, Grady tells them about the hand bones in the floor, so Sandy goes back to the cabin with him. When they get there, the bones are gone, and Sandy insists Grady imagined them.
Without Sandy seeing before she leaves, he finds an envelope pushed under the door that contains a newspaper clipping of a story Abby wrote years ago about a woman, Coraline, wrongly convicted of killing her daughters rapist. Grady thinks all this imaging is due to his prolonged insomnia after Abby disappeared. He tries to sleep, but is still awake awhile later when he sees a face in the window.
Chapters 16-17
Grady jumps up to get a fire poker, but when he turns around the face is gone. When he goes outside, he only hears a harmonica playing one of Abby’s favorite songs, and he notices the harmonica he saw in the cabin is gone. Because it’s so windy and far off, he thinks he’s imagining the music, and he stays awake to start working on writing the manuscript in his voice.
Once it’s morning, he walks to town to get more coffee, and stops in the church where he meets Reverend Melody. Grady thinks he sees someone looking like Abby slip out the far door as he walks in, but Rev. Melody says no one else was here. Melody is kind of strange, and locks the door behind Grady as he leaves.
Chapters 18-19
Grady goes to see the cemetery on her tip where he finds multiple children graves with the same day they died. Suddenly, an elderly woman Grady thinks looks like Sandy is behind him telling him those are the Children of the Mist and he should leave right away. Grady turns to look at whatever the older lady is looking as in the distance, and by the time he turns back she’s gone.
Grady goes to the general store where he asks Cora about her past thinking she might be the Coraline from the newspaper article. She won’t give him a straight answer, and hurries him out of the store when he asks if she ever had a daughter.
Chapters 20-21
On his way out of the village, Grady stops in the butcher and meets Mary and Alex, the two women who run the butcher shop. When he gets a glimpse of the back room, he thinks he sees a human body on an operating table. Again, he convinces himself he’s imagining it, but he finds Mary and Alex unsettling as they never stop smiling and ask if he left all his secrets behind.
Grady can’t figure out what’s going on with this island and why everyone is strange. When he gets back to the cabin, there’s another of Abby’s newspaper clippings under the door about a woman who killed herself after her husband’s high profile affair. The article mentions that their teenage daughter, Alexandra, threw a brick at a journalist that showed up at the funeral and was stalking them.
Chapter 22 One Week Before She Disappeared- Abby
Abby tells the woman that her husband doesn’t notice her anymore, and he only cares about his books. She feels trapped in the marriage, and she wants more from life. She’s changed as a person, and her husband hasn’t noticed at all.
Chapters 23-24
Grady thinks back to the times him and Abby would argue about having children. He also said no because they both had bad childhoods and no time for a baby now, but she said she might want a baby one day. This was the only topic they had real arguments about, and the only times Grady felt Abby was actually hurtful in this arguments.
To distance himself from the strangeness of the island, Grady locks himself in his cabin to work on the book, and only goes to the village for supplies. He does this for six weeks until the first draft is done, and then goes into town to ask Cora to order a printer. When she’s writing it down, she makes a comment about him never leaving the island.
Chapters 25-26
Two days later, Sandy delivers Grady’s printer, and won’t answer any of his questions about when the ferry returns to the mainland. She suggests Grady uses Charles old car in the shed, and she finds the keys to the shed in a kitchen drawer, even though Grady has been searching the house for those keys for weeks. Later, Grady uses the printer to print and edit a copy of his book to send to Kitty.
Grady drives himself and Columbo to a hiking trail that says it’s closed, but they start up anyways. At the top, he finds Reverend Melody reading a book who asks him about his wife. Grady tries to change the subject because he has to move on, and then Melody says she has to go back to the church for work to do and people to bury. He finds the comment odd because he hasn’t heard of anyone on the island dying.
Chapters 27-28
As he starts down the trial, the mist moves in, and Grady thinks he hears Abby calling for him. Columbo runs off in that direction, but the mist is so thick that Grady can’t see anything. Eventually, Columbo comes back to a terrified Grady, and they make it back to the car.
Back at the cabin, the door is open, and sitting on the desk is another newspaper clipping and the missing harmonica. The newspaper clipping by Abby is about a women’s march against domestic violence, and one woman who was ignored by the police when her husband beat her into a coma. Grady wants to leave the island immediately, but not only does he not know how, but he needs the money from the new book to have somewhere else to live.
Chapters 29-30
Grady thinks back to the week his latest book came out before Abby disappeared, and mentioned she had a big argument with Kitty. Grady has Cora mail his manuscript to Kitty, but when he asks about the ferry back, Cora says she doesn’t have a timetable for it. Looking to celebrate the book, Grady goes over to the only pub on the island which says it’s run by Sidney and Arabella, and he meets Arabella inside.
Grady notices that Arabella has a lot of scars along with a ring he’s seen other residents of the island wearing, and she says it means they’re part of the Isle of Amberly Trust. After talking for a little, Arabella mentioned that Charles hung himself inside the cabin, and Sandy was really upset because they were close friends. Sandy even read all Charles first manuscripts according to Arabella, and Grady panics Sandy will know he copied the book.
Arabella also mentions that the tea Cora has been giving him to help with sleep is a hallucinogenic.
Chapters 31-32
When Grady goes looking for Sandy at her house, Midge, who looks like she’s been crying, says to check Darkside Cave, so he drives there. When he’s walking down to the cave, he sees a woman that looks like Abby and tries to follow her, but only finds Sandy in the cave who insists she’s been alone. Sandy is drinking whiskey, and tells Grady this is where thirteen children died from the island.
A substitute teacher from the mainland went to the pub instead of watching the children in school, and they made it to the cave while he was gone. But the cave filled when the tide came in, and all the children died including Sandy’s daughter. When Grady starts driving back to his cabin in the heavy fog, he hits a woman on a bike, and lying in the road he’s sure it’s his vanished wife.
Chapters 33-35
He’s positive it’s Abby as she looks and sounds exactly the same except she now has brown eyes instead of blue, but she insists she’s doesn’t know him. Still treating him like a stranger, she asks for a ride down the road to the pottery shop where she works because he hit her bike with his car. Grady thinks she must have lost her memory because this has to be his wife.
On the ride over, Grady is convinced this is his wife, even though there are some differences like she said she loves the ocean when Abby didn’t. This woman also has a tattoo which Abby didn’t like and dresses very different. When they get to the pottery, called Beautiful Ugly, the woman says her name is Aubrey, and she’s owned this place for about a year.
While Aubrey gets him some tea, Grady pockets a note from the Isle of Amberley Trust meeting. Aubrey mentions that Grady shouldn’t keep Columbo in the car waiting, but Grady’s sure he never told her the dog’s name. As he’s leaving, Aubrey mentions that she’s married, too.
Chapter 36 One Week Before She Disappeared- Abby
The lady comment said Abby sounds like she made up her mind to leave her husband, and Abby nods but also says she’s scared. Abby thinks about the recent disagreements she’s had with her husband about renovating an old property they bought. When asked what she’ll do if she does leave her husband, Abby says the only place she’s thought of as home is the Isle of Amberley.
Chapters 37-38
Aubrey says she’s married to Travers, the tree doctor on the island, when her walkie-talkie goes off with someone asking if anyone seen “the two of them“. Aubrey replies that she’s at the pottery with the author, and Midge replies asking if they’ve seen Sandy because the tide has come into the cave and she’s not back. Grady drives them both to Sandy and Midge’s house, and Midge asks Grady if he saw Sandy in the cave.
Grady lies saying he never went into the cave, and him and Aubrey go inside the house to console a crying Midge. On the wall, Grady notices a photo of Abby as a child, and a photo of Aubrey getting married recently on the island. As he’s leaving, he sees Sandy and Midge’s mother, who was the woman from the cemetery, in the upstairs window mouthing the word leave.
When he gets back to his cabin, he pulls out the walkie-talkie he’s ‘borrowing’.
Chapters 39-40
When he falls asleep, Grady has a dream someone’s under his bed, but when he wakes up, no one‘s there even though he notices the front door is wide open. The next day he goes to find Travers, and finds out she’s a beautiful woman. Even though the woman doesn’t answer his questions because he’s a stranger, Grady asked about Aubrey, but the pamphlet he took from her pottery has a picture of a different woman than yesterday. Now he thinks he’s losing his mind and the woman wasn’t Abby.
Chapter 41 One Week Before She Disappeared— Abby
Abby tells a woman that her and her husband are incompatible because she wants kids and he doesn’t. She’s already made up her mind to leave him, but she doesn’t want to hurt him. When the woman asks if she’s afraid, she says no.
Chapters 42-43
Grady’s at the house with Travers when he decides it’s too much for him and needs to leave. Then he hears a baby crying upstairs. He drives into town and sees Cora to ask about a boat off the island.
Cora makes a passing comment about the author between him and Charles not living long as well as writing a bad book. Grady thinks he hears Cora say he doesn’t have any family or anyone that knows he’s hear, but then he thinks he’s imaging it since she can’t know that. Then, Cora tells him there won’t be a ferry soon because they found Sandy dead.
Chapters 44-48
Back in his car, Grady hears them talking about him and how he’s loosing it on the walkie talkie. Then suddenly remembering, he tries the phone box again to call Kitty and gets through even though she’s having trouble hearing him. She says he needs to get off the island immediately before the phone dies like someone cut the line.
Grady runs back to the cabin because his car is suddenly and suspiciously out of gas. It’s now nighttime, and there’s no power when he gets back to the cabin. He finds extra gas in the shed, and runs back to the village, but the car is gone.
Following the sound of voices, Grady goes into the church to find all the residents of the island, who are all women, including Sandy. Sandy tells Grady he must be surprised to see her since he left her to drown in the cave since she would know he stole the book from Charles. Then, everyone in the church leaves except Abby.
Chapter 49 After She Disappeared— Abby
Abby thinks about how she has exciting news for Grady, but she’s nervous because he only thinks about himself. She reflects that she always feels second to his books. Then, she says she’s confused when she got out of the car the day she disappeared.
Chapters 50-51
It’s really Abby who was wearing brown contacts yesterday, and she admits she grew up on the island. She left because the Children of the mist were her fault.
A substitute teacher from the mainland tried to assault her in her home when she was home sick. So she ran looking for help, and eventually made it to the school with her friends. All the kids go to hide in Darkside Cave, but the tide comes in before the adults realize, leaving only Abby alive.
She never told him because she wanted to forget it all. And Abby tells him that all the women on the island are victims of abuse from men.
Chapters 52-54
Abby tells Grady that she really loves Travers, and the baby he heard is her daughter, Holly, who can’t be his because he secretly had a vasectomy. Then, Abby asks why Grady laid down in the road pretending to be a woman, so that Abby would get out of the car. Then, Grady pushed her off the edge of a cliff.
Abby admits she and island did all this to him, so he would loose everything like she did. She just wants to know why he tried to kill her. Instead of answering, he runs back to the cabin.
Chapter 55
Sitting in the cabin is Kitty, which confuses Grady more, but Kitty says this is her story, too. Kitty says she raised Abby after Abby’s mom, Kitty’s best friend, committed suicide, and Abby is named after Kitty who’s real name is Abby, too. And Kitty used to be married to Charles, who she met on a plane—making Kitty the Abby from the parts from ‘Abby’s’ point of view.
Chapter 56
Kitty, who grew up on Amberley, brought Charles here after they were married, but Charles quickly only started caring about his books and writing career (like Grady). Then, Kitty tells him how the piano teacher abused her as a child, so her mother chopped off his hand with an ax (the same hand bones in the cabin) before moving them to London. That same piano teacher was the substitute teacher who came back to the same house and tried to do the same thing to Abby out of anger and bitterness.
Sandy ended up killing the man after the children died, and Charles helped her bury him behind the church. Blaming themselves for the tragedy because Abby ran to both Kitty and Charles after the man came, but they both turned her away causing her to find the other children. After that, Sandy and the Trust started phasing out all men on the island, but Charles disagreed leading to a falling out between him and Sandy. Kitty took Abby to London, leaving Charles behind on the island.
Chapters 57-58
Kitty also thought Abby disappeared until Sandy invited her back to the island where she saw Abby again. Abby told Kitty how Grady pushed her off the cliff, but she grabbed a branch right over the edge to hang on. Instead of going back home or to the police, Abby decided to disappear to Amberely.
When Kitty found out, she agreed with Abby and the women of the island to work together to make Grady lose his mind. But they also needed him to write a successful book because the island used to live off the money from Charles books. So, Kitty sent him to the island after they left the unfinished manuscript in the cabin for Grady to finish.
Grady admits that he pushed Abby because he had found a positive pregnancy test and figured she was leaving him for someone else. He thought he was losing Abby and would lose Kitty as his agent if they divorced. And he couldn’t lose the only two things he loves— his wife and his books.
Chapter 59
He says he regrets it now, and Kitty says the money Abby took out before her disappearance was for IVF with an anonymous donor. But Abby still loved Grady and was going to stay with him, she just wanted a baby. The women on the only will now only let him stay if he writes more books, so the island can use the revenue instead of letting tourists on the island.
Kitty admits the women on the island keep each other updated about his movements with the walkie talkies, and they were all in on it. Except for Midge and Sandy’s mother who was putting the newspaper clippings in his cabin to warn him. Kitty also says she sent a different author to the island to write a book, but he tried to get off the island with an old rowboat and accidentally drown.
One Year Later
Grady finds out from Cora that his book is at the top of the best seller list, and he just sent Kitty his next book. Cora gives him a bottle of champagne that was left for him, and he goes back to the cabin to drink it. After, he passes out and has a weird dream of his wife Abby being next to him. Then, he thinks he’s in a coffin underground where he hears a walkie talkie, but he can’t tell if it’s real or a dream.
Read the Book Review
Now that you’re reminded of everything that happened in the book, check out my full book summary. Whether you’re a big fan of Alice Feeney’s thrillers or this is your first time, I want to hear about it! And I have more recommendations in the review if you’re looking for another book with a drastic turn, dark characters, or an unreliable narrator.
