A review by sephlav
A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal by Jen Waite
1.0
I don’t often hate a book quite like I hated this one, but boy did I ever hate it.
This opinion comes from bias. I know this. But hey, opinions are subjective. First off, when I’m being sold a memoir of marriage and betrayal, I’m expecting some major drama honey. Something, you know, MEMOIR worthy. But…her husband…cheated. And lied about it. And got caught. Maybe I’m heartless but ???
And THEN she spins it as being this massive redemption story about surviving a sociopath/psychopath and while I don’t really believe in those terms…I think it might be a stretch. Like yes, this guy is an asshole. Yes, what happened to her is tragic. But it wasn’t (to me) all out of the ordinary insane and it seemed to be just a self serving story of exaggerated victimhood fuelled by close family and acquaintances who were way too close to the situation.
And unfortunately, if that wasn’t bad enough, the writing was really bad. Like, thirteen year old girl on tumblr bad. Made me visibly cringe and sigh out loud bad.
I genuinely don’t enjoy dragging books through the mud like this, especially not non fiction books where there is a real person involved, but with this one, I genuinely couldn’t help it. It was just such a massive waste of my time.
This opinion comes from bias. I know this. But hey, opinions are subjective. First off, when I’m being sold a memoir of marriage and betrayal, I’m expecting some major drama honey. Something, you know, MEMOIR worthy. But…her husband…cheated. And lied about it. And got caught. Maybe I’m heartless but ???
And THEN she spins it as being this massive redemption story about surviving a sociopath/psychopath and while I don’t really believe in those terms…I think it might be a stretch. Like yes, this guy is an asshole. Yes, what happened to her is tragic. But it wasn’t (to me) all out of the ordinary insane and it seemed to be just a self serving story of exaggerated victimhood fuelled by close family and acquaintances who were way too close to the situation.
And unfortunately, if that wasn’t bad enough, the writing was really bad. Like, thirteen year old girl on tumblr bad. Made me visibly cringe and sigh out loud bad.
I genuinely don’t enjoy dragging books through the mud like this, especially not non fiction books where there is a real person involved, but with this one, I genuinely couldn’t help it. It was just such a massive waste of my time.