Book Review: Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves
A modern take on death personified, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt tells the story of Travis, a lonely guy who is searching for meaning as he leads other people to death. Check out my full review for Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt below!
Book Information
Travis is a modern-day death who walks around like a regular guy, lives in an apartment, and is searching for meaning as he leads other people to the end of their life. When he meets a midwife who is nothing like the other people he’s known, and her daughter who is wonderful and funny and kind, Travis starts to wonder what his place is in it all. The more he spends time with them, the less he wants to do his job as death.
Review | Heidi Dischler
I’m gonna be honest: I did not like this book. I was reading Goodreads reviews after finishing it, and one user said that this book should be called “Everything Hurts and Nothing Was Beautiful”. I cackled, I’m not gonna lie. Because, seriously, this book hurt. Not in a good way, in my opinion, either.
The writing was okay, but I was so confused sometimes because it was jumping from place to place to place and Travis just kept having random interactions with people who were dying. I didn’t think it was necessary to the plot even though Travis is death. It felt overbearing and just… sad. Also, I was never truly sure about what the actual timeline was (more on that in the spoilers).
The characters (specifically Layla and Dalia) were probably the shining light in this book until the halfway (ish) point. Then it was just depressinggggggg.
Spoilers ahead.
Basically, Layla dies of meningitis (and her mom blames herself for not catching it earlier). It RUINED the book for me. It was not a necessary character death and I am still checking my own children for rashes because I’m so paranoid now. After that, Dalia spirals and obviously becomes depressed. Then you find out that the old woman Travis always visited is Dalia in the future (she does not, in fact, commit suicide). That’s what was making me so confused about the timeline and I didn’t even know that it was a different timeline until the end. It was just written in a confusing way, to be honest.
Overall, not a super fun book to read and was confusing a majority of the time. My favorite characters got the worst end of the stick and it ruined the whole book for me.
Source: Book of the Month Pick
(P.S. You can read this book for free by signing up for a free trial of Audible, which gives you two free audiobooks of your choice!)
