As the daughter of a drug dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. It's safer to keep her mouth shut and stay out of sight. Struggling to raise her little brother, Donal, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible adult around. Obsessed with the constellations, she finds peace in the starry night sky above the fields behind her house, until one night her star gazing causes an accident. After witnessing his motorcycle wreck, she forms an unusual friendship with one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold. By the time Wavy is a teenager, her relationship with Kellen is the only tender thing in a brutal world of addicts and debauchery.
When tragedy rips Wavy's family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny of the outside world.
Kellen may not be innocent, but he is the fixed point in Wavy and Donal's chaotic universe. Instead of playing it safe, Wavy has to learn to fight for Kellen, for her brother, and for herself.
About the Author
Bryn Greenwood is a fourth-generation Kansan, one of seven sisters, and the daughter of a mostly reformed drug dealer. She earned a MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Reckless Oath We Made, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, Last Will, and Lie Lay Lain. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Industry Reviews
New York Times bestseller
USA Today bestseller
Book of the Month Club 2016 Book of the Year
Second Place Goodreads Best Fiction of 2016
31 Books Bringing the Heat this Summer -Bustle
Top Ten Hottest Reads of 2016 -New York Daily News
Best Books of 2016 -St. Louis Post Dispatch
If you're looking for a dangerous, shocking, and unexpectedly touching story, this is it...This is a book that will shake you to the core.
Bustle 31 Books Bringing the Heat this Summer
Captivating and smartly written from the first page, Greenwood's work is instantly absorbing. Pithy characters saunter, charge or stumble into each scene via raw, gripping narrative. . . . [Greenwood] tells her story as if lifting a cloth thread by thread, revealing heartbreaking landscapes and riveting dialogue in perfect timing. This book won't pull at heartstrings but instead yank out the entire organ and shake it about before lodging it back in an unfamiliar position.
Christina Ledbetter The Associated Press
This book destroyed me. I have never read anything like it. I came to the end of the novel with my mind-reeling, my emotions scattered, and completely unsure exactly what I did feel about it...but one thing is certain: I felt. Oh hell, I felt. I don't think I'll ever get these characters off my mind.
Emily May #1 Worldwide most popular reviewer, Goodreads
The title says it all. You will hold your little heart in your hands and keep blowing on it to make sure it's alive.
The Top Ten Hottest Reads of 2016 New York Daily News
This is one of those books whose story, if you heard about it on the news or glimpsed some sensationalist headline, would be horrifying, but in THIS book, with THESE characters, where you are privy to interior monologues and backstories and a hundred examples of what defines them as people, it makes sense. It's two damaged people finding something in the other that answers a need, and it's unexpectedly touching. It's so, so impressive. Vibrant. Heartbreaking. Sympathetic. Her writing is astonishing.
Karen #1 US most popular reviewer, Goodreads
Bryn Greenwood's All the Ugly and Wonderful Things [is] so freakishly good and dangerous that it should come with a warning label... The writing is direct and muscular, a snake with all the slithery danger of a coiled rattler on a hot rock. VERDICT: Greenwood (from Kansas, daughter of a "mostly reformed drug dealer") astounds in creating a world where assorted murderers, felons, and thieves are sympathetic.
Library Journal
Bryn Greenwood has handed readers a strange - but strangely grabbing - tale.
Harry Levins St. Louis Post Dispatch, Best of 2016
Greenwood's haunting novel...is a story that will stay with readers long after the book is finished.
Lisa McLendon The Wichita Eagle
[A] powerful, provocative debut...intelligent, honest, and unsentimental.
Review Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)
An emotionally resonant novel with an unlikely cast of characters you won't soon forget. Bryn Greenwood's unique voice and her understanding of human nature offer an amazing tale of family, loss, and love that's as unpredictable and inspiring as love itself.
Brunonia Barry New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader
Written in lyrical and searingly honest prose, Bryn Greenwood tells a powerful story of love and resilience against the bleakest of backdrops. Like the best fiction, this is a novel that means to disturb and challenge as it forces us to look with compassion on every last one of its flawed, memorable characters. I was captivated from the first page to the last.
Patry Francis three time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and author of The Orphans of Race Point
