All of the characters had potential yet it seemed like it was wasted. It seems like that was the life she had always known. Cassie was sort of thrust into this life while Alex seems like much more comfortable with it. Delving into Alex's background could've been extremely interesting considering how different her and Cassie seem. Cassie wasn't the only character that lacked developing. That was when all of her emotions just burst out and you understood her pain. Cassie wasn't all that fleshed out until she started rebelling. So it was a bit difficult to empathize with her at the beginning. I didn't get a clear picture of who Cassie was as a good girl. One minute she's excited about being accepted into the popular smarties clique and the next minute she's hanging out with Alex doing drugs and having sex. The shift between Cassie's 'good girl' status to her 'bad girl' persona just went too quickly.

Yet, that right there was what worked against it. The book did not drag one bit and the 'action' starts almost immediately. So much that I found myself flinching with the certain situations that the characters have gone through (mainly Sarah's backstory). I read this literally in two hours without moving from where I was sitting. One thing that you can say about Beautiful is that it is a page-turner. While I don't regret reading it, I wish that I had picked up this book at the library instead of purchasing it. After the initial hurdles, I found myself enjoying it a little bit more. It also wasn't explaining itself very well. It seemed like a rip-off of the film Thirteen. When I first started this book, I didn't really like it.

Amy reed beautiful