Book Review: This Beautiful Life

Reading This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman was like a breath of fresh air. You know those books where in just reading the first few lines you know that you are going to love the entire thing from beginning to end? That is just what you get with This Beautiful Life.

While the topic of this book is one that might leave you a little squeamish, it is one that could all too easily creep into our lives or the lives of a loved one. Jake is a fifteen-year-old who gets an unsolicited sexually explicit video from an admirer, and his first instinct is to forward it to his friend so he can see the insanity. This single click of his mouse sends his entire family into a tailspin that they find impossible to escape.

The narration is shared by Jake, his mother, and his father, and therefore the reader can easily see the overwhelming power of simple decisions and the mammoth that is today’s technology, and how these two things can change everything for a good family, bringing the nastiness and instability to the surface in the blink of an eye.

The situation in this book, unfortunately, is one that we all could face, and it is one of those terrifying tales that makes me worry about my daughter as she grows, but is also a cautionary tale – there is clearly so much I need to be prepared for as a parent in this rapidly-changing world. Helen Schulman tackles this issue with such lyrical language and with such beautiful characters that she makes you want to take this journey into pain and heart-ache with her characters and see their story through to the end. This is a book I highly recommend and will be sharing with many.

If you want to hear what others on the TLC book tour had to say, click HERE.

I was given a free copy of This Beautiful Life, but was not compensated for this review. Everything in this review is my personal opinion.