What a thoroughly enjoyable read. Mercy is a lovable misfit struggling to cope with what has been thrown at her so she takes off on a road trip with her sausage dog companion. Along the way she meets some interesting characters, has adventures and learns about herself too. A lovely, heartfelt tale that is so relevant today. A touch of humour and Australian references make it even more enjoyable. Loved it. Thank you.

An exquisite blend of heartache and hope. Life affirming and bittersweet, this novel is like a breath of fresh air. A celebration of the kindness of strangers, taking on life moment by moment, and discovering the beauty of just being present. I loved this novel, in all its glorious pain and pleasure. Remember the name Kim Lock. You’re going to want to read all of her books.

I have to say I really struggled with this one and I actually didn't finish it as I found it boring, predictable and it was a bit uninteresting.

I could see how it may appeal to some people as the subject could have made it a more exciting book to read but it just dragged on and didn't really go anywhere or bring anything different to a story that seems to be the norm in this day and age.

Sorry but I just couldn't bring myself to finish it.

I love any book that is set in outback Australia and this book is no different. I want to one day quit a job and jump in a car and drive around Australia, and understand the land of the First Nations People.

This story follows Mercy Blain who at one time suffered continuous life changing events. Coupled with a tumultuous relationship with her mother and a failed marriage, Mercy starts getting bank attacks on the regular. And before long her instability has made her nervous to even go to the letterbox each day.

Mercy takes off through the middle of Australia and finds friendships, old foes, beautiful scenery and of course, herself ✨ - There is a little bit of Mercy within all of us. So what’s stopping you taking that next step?! Take the plunge and do what you have always wanted to do! Thanks Mercy for reminding me that life is short and you only get one! 💙

This book was for me, reminiscent of Eleanor Oliphant and had all the similar feels. I adored Mercy, her vulnerabilities, flaws, the tragedy she'd experienced, her wisdom and ultimately her bravery. I enjoyed the way the author dripped her backstory into the narrative. Her road trip was a wonderful read of meeting the true treasures of Australia that you will only ever meet on such a trip, Her dog Wasabi was a lovely touch. It is a reminder that life can be tough and messy but there is beauty in everything.

I really enjoyed the story of Mercy and her unexpected adventures travelling the outback to Darwin in a Hijet van, and could really related to much of it. Irrational fears, for one. But also the travels, having been through many of the locations mentioned in the story.
The story was fun in parts, sad in parts, and I loved how each of the characters she meets along the way help her in ways she doesn't even realise.
I did feel there were things missing at the end. Mercy has faced her biggest demons, but I wanted to know more. More of what happened at the moment fate said Go. More of what happened to 'Ann fucking Barker' after Mercy confronted her. Most of all I wanted to know for sure that her future plans include a brawny Scottish bloke with a man-bun.

“You don’t face anxiety by hiding from it”

On the eve before Mercy’s 36th birthday, her home (which she hadn’t left in 2 years) was engulfed in flames and reduced to a smokey wasteland. In the following days, staring out the spare bedroom window of her ex-husbands home, there is a glimmer of hope when she spots an old camper van with the slogan ‘home is where you are’ fading along the side.

The note to the reader, a raw account of dealing with panic attacks, is a must-read to set the tone of what to expect with Mercy. There were many parallels between Mercy and the author's description of anxiety, possibly attributing to why I felt the emotions of the book were so relatable.

From the beginning, I warmed to Mercy. She is an intelligent and thoughtful woman who is in tune with her emotions despite the internal chaos she faces. While this is non-fiction, there are many lessons for the reader.

Kim’s visualisation of the red earth and flaming sky of the Australian outback had me feeling like I was travelling down the highway in camaraderie with Mercy and Wasabi.

A narrative of self-discovery and the intricacies of anxiety & grief; The Other Side of Beautiful is the perfect match for friends of Eleanor Oliphant.

A woman with Agoraphobia loses her home to a fire and is forced out into the world for the first time in two years. A spontaneous decision sees her on the road from Adelaide to Darwin.

This book was a heartfelt journey through one woman's experience, as well as the heart of Australia. The writing was vivid, and the story drew you along. I found myself wanting to get to the bottom of her past - understand what had driven her from the world, and what it might take for her to re-join it.

I would recommend this novel for anyone who like the deeper side of contemporary fiction.

The Other Side of Beautiful
By Kim Lock

I am really glad I read this book without reading the blurb, as this pretty much gives you a snapshot of the whole book, giving just about everything away. I enjoyed having the story unfurl in front of my eyes.

If you can, ignore the back cover and also don’t get too hung up on the title, as this doesn’t give a good representation of the content either.

What you shouldn’t ignore is the book itself. I had trouble putting it down as I was so engaged with the central character, the flawed Mercy Blain and her little sausage dog Wasabi. I was in her corner, cheering her on and holding my breath as she faced each new challenge.

This is a story of courage and strength, persistence, and resilience – a woman who faced her challenges even when she didn’t want to and the outcomes for her along the way.

We go on a journey with Mercy, which starts out in the leafy suburbs of Adelaide and takes us all the way to the top end of Australia.

What made it even more enjoyable for me was that in the early part of the book I travelled with Mercy through Adelaide and towards the Flinders Ranges, an area I know pretty well. I live in South Australia’s Clare Valley and it’s always lovely to read impressions of where you live.

I have also been, to a lesser extent, in the same emotional black hole which Mercy experiences, so this was another reason to keep cheering her on.

My Recommendation
I loved this book and would recommend it – even if the cover looks a bit like a self-help manual – but then again, perhaps it is!

Mercy and her travels take us on a journey which has the ability to make us think about our lives, what’s important and how coping mechanisms can often turn on us.

Author Kim Lock gives us hope in a sometimes poignant, quirky, funny and ultimately enlightening story of a woman, her dog and her salvation.

Now I’m going to hunt up her backlist!

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a review copy.

The Other Side of Beautiful
By Kim Lock
ISBN: 9781867214908
Publisher: Harper Collins
Release date: 7 July 2021

Does the world need another quirky left of centre protagonist?

When that protagonist is Mercy Blain the answer is a big fat YES!

After experiencing the worst week of her life Mercy is struck by severe anxiety. With her dachshund Wasabi by her side and keys to a Daihatsu Hijet, Mercy sets out to face her fears and reclaim her life. In doing so this beautifully written book takes the reader along for a wild ride through the Australian outback, meeting many different characters along the way, from the charming Scotsman Andy to a pair of happy hour hosting grey nomads Burt and Jan.

As someone who suffers with anxiety (not to the same extremes as Mercy) I found this book relatable and entertaining, it shows the author is writing from a place of experience. It almost made me want to set out on a road trip, but then I remembered how anxious I get driving as was happy to tag along on this trip through Kim Locks wonderful writing instead.

I was very eager to read this book after seeing the cover I imagined that it was going to be a quirky read and wasn't disappointed.

The Other Side of Beautiful follows the story of Mercy who suffers with panic disorder. Mercy is a doctor and after an incident at the hospital where she worked, she found herself unable to leave her house for 2 whole years. In an unfortunate event Mercy's house burns down and she is left with nothing but the clothes she is wearing, her phone and her little sausage dog called Wasabi.

Mercy impulsively buys herself a banged up old Van and embarks on a journey to where she is not quite sure but adrenaline spurs her on and she just starts driving.

I absolutely loved this book. The author Kim Lock who herself explained in the beginning of the novel that she faced her own challenges with anxiety and panic attacks, did such a wonderful job of explaining how debilitating it can be living with these types of disorders and just how hard it is to carry out such small every day tasks.

I found the story relatable and real and highly recommend this book to anyone who likes a quirky read and a bit of fun!

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Australia for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From the opening paragraph of The Other Side of Beautiful it is obvious that this will be a book to enjoy
There is a prologue which I skipped through in my haste to start the ‘real’ book which (reading after) explains how the author can make Mercy Blain so convincing. So- back to the opening paragraph...
‘... Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people : she hasn’t been outside that house for two years now. ...’
What follows as Mercy tries to survive her fear of everything is an uplifting, funny and wise novel with colourful characters, a road trip through Central Australia and even an endearing dog called Wasabi.
Don’t miss this book - it’s the best I have read in a long time.

Amusing, inspiring and just generally likeable, The Other Side of Beautiful follows anxious, agoraphobic Mercy Blain and her little dog Wasabi on an impulsive adventure across Australia in a battered old van.
It's a fabulous story full of unique, memorable characters and places. The Other Side of Beautiful is immediately absorbing and so easy to keep reading that you almost don't notice the deeper ideas around relationships and human imperfection. It's a beautifully told story that will stay with you long after you've finished reading; highly recommended.

Mercy Blain, doctor and recluse, finds herself standing OUTside her home for the first time in two years, watching in a fog as it burns down. With only her phone and her sausage dog Wasabi she buys a beaten up van and embarks on a journey of self discovery that takes her across the vast Australian outback, into herself and out the other side.

Beautifully written, this book immerses the reader in the sights and sounds of the outback. There are so many themes woven throughout this book: mental health, trauma, adventure, motherhood, anxiety, social responsibility, romance, travel and humour, and Lock is unapologetic about confronting each of these issues, revealing more and more as Mercy travels deeper into both herself and the Red Centre.

This was an incredible read, one of those can't-put-down-even-though-it's-2am books. Mercy is a flawed but utterly relatable character, hiding from massive trauma in her past. The Grey Nomads - we all know people like them: convivial, obsessive in their "hurry up and slow down" lifestyle, but providing a gentle fatherly influence in Mercy's journey. Wasabi, providing the stabilising influence that only pets can do. We are taken on an emotional rollercoaster ride with Mercy as she learns to process her trauma and face her anxiety head on.

A brilliant read.

~I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Harlequin Australia in exchange for an honest review~

<i>The Other Side of Beautiful</I> is about Dr Mercy Blaine’s breakthrough following two years of self-isolation due to a nervous breakdown.

The novel was inspired by the author’s own challenges with anxiety and panic attacks.

Lock did a great job showing the many intricacies of anxiety, panic attacks, depression and everything those entail, including agoraphobia. But this is not a depressing novel. After her house burns down, Mercy finds herself on a literal journey in an old Daihatsu van with only Wasabi, her sausage dog, for company. Travelling through the middle of Australia, she comes across the grey nomads – retired people, who love to travel around Australia in their caravans.

A road trip + a cute dog - yes, please.

This was a lovely novel, with a realistic plot. The characters were well fleshed out. There were a few sweet moments, sans the melodrama, so I expect many will enjoy and appreciate this debut novel. I certainly did.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for the opportunity to read this Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for a review.

I loved reading about Mercy and Wasabi's adventures with their quiet friend, I would love to know what happened to Andy (Adventure 2 anyone?).

The characters where lovable, and relatable, I'm sure everyone has at least one Bert in their lives.

This book is worth the picking up, even if its to armchair travel across some of Australia's beautiful outback in an old little campervan.

#TheOtherSideofBeautiful #NetGalley

Trauma in life is inevitable.

None of us particularly want to admit to that since it means dismantling this cosy late twentieth century notion that it we do everything right we will lives as charmed as the happy-ever-after in a fairytale.

But life isn’t terribly accommodating to such fancifully self-serving philosophical notions, a hard, cold reality that comes crashing down upon Mercy Blain when a week of deeply traumatic events including the breakdown of her marriage to Eugene who runs off with his male barista lover sends her into hiding in her own home, a place she doesn’t leave, save for the occasional hesitant walk down the street, for two years.

That’s a lot of Greta Garbo time going on there, and in The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock, we find out what it is drove Mercy there in the first place and how against her medical training which says you don’t give into anxiety, she has not only acquiesced but given her life wholesale over the idea that the world outside is scary, uncertain place and not worth setting foot in.

That is until her home burns down one night, leaving Mercy with nothing but her sausage dog Wasabi and the option of a temporary home with her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene who still cares for a great deal but whose boyfriend is none too keen to have her around.

In an impossible situation, where your sanctuary has been ripped out from under you in a fiery hell that almost claimed your life, what is a person to do?

Well, as it turns out, you buy a very old Daihatsu Hijet from an old man on your ex’s street and set off without any planning or premeditation and you drive to Darwin, hoping that somewhere along the way some sort of answer to what to do next will present itself.

To be honest, it’s doubtful Mercy even thinks that as the narrative, which is quirkily charming and heartbreakingly honest in equal measure, goes sedately along – Hijets are not known for her speed as the constant streams of road trains and passing Grey Nomads will attest – in ways that give Mercy’s slow journey towards healing the time needed to really find its feet.

The Other Side of Beautiful is a brilliant piece of lo-fi writing because while the idea of simply setting off on a just over 3000km jaunt seems wildly eccentric and fun, the reality is that for Mercy it’s a last-minute, unplanned trip into the very darkest of her fears and a deeply unsettling sense that there is nothing left for her in life besides hiding out on her home.

However, with some major issues looming over her, including one that she cannot ignore from her medical career days, and a home in ashes, Mercy has no choice but to head somewhere, anywhere, and The Other Side of Beautiful captures with moving honesty and a burbling sense of gathering hope what it’s like to reach the very end of yourself and find that maybe there’s more of that story to be told.

But not without grappling with a whole of inner demons, all of which come out in sizeable number whenever Mercy has to do anything.

Trips to the supermarket suddenly become terrifying treks into the demanding unknown, staying at caravan parks with gregariously inclusive Grey Nomads, a handsome Scottish man named Andrew and a journalist whose desire for clickbait above humanity played a role in ruining Mercy’s life become a lesson in re-socialising that is scary and intoxicatingly good all at once, and being out in the wide blue open are a nightmare that slowly but surely begins to lose much of the terror that kept Mercy within her now lost home.

What makes The Other Side of Beautiful such a realistic if reassuringly uplifting read is that at no time does Lock pretend that getting over trauma is some kind of walk in the park, or more accurately for this novel, a drive down the Stuart Highway.

She is resolutely truthful about how hard it is to leave the trauma behind and how anxiety constantly subsumes you in a miasma of paranoia and fear such that the facts on the ground simply don’t mean anything, lost to all kinds of dark thoughts and frightening possibilities that sound so real and loud that shutting them down begins to feel like mission impossible.

But in the midst of all this existential grappling, Lock also beautifully captures how funny and hopeful life can be when you finally reengage with it.

In Mercy’s case, that reengagement is a forced thing that she has no choice but to deal with on some level – though, of course, she ups he ante considerably by sending herself out into a world she barely knows and which is full of people she would never normally encounter – but reengagement it nonetheless is, and since life is nothing if not hilariously unpredictable, there’s also a great deal of laugh out loud and heart to the story because life, even at its darkest, still has its moments of weird levity, even if at the time you’re none too keen to participate in it.

The great pleasure of The Other Side of Beautiful, populated by quirky but realistic characters, a narrative which is both languorous and scarily fast (for Mercy, at least) and a rekindled sense that life is not all doom and hermitic gloom, is that Lock, writing with great compassion and insight, is able to blend fear and hope, terror and exciting possibility together in such a way that the kind of healing Mercy encounters feels entirely possible.

Few of us will likely ever buy a van on a whim, and even after finding a box of cremated remains, continue driving the entire way, south to north across an island continent, but the universality of what Mercy experiences rings true at every heartwarmingly funny and darkly serious point, imbuing The Other Side of Beautiful with a lovely sense of life as it is lived and the reassuring knowledge that no matter how oppressive the darkness of anxiety or depression may be, and Lock doesn’t pretend it’s anything but a titanic enemy, that perhaps life can surprise you and you can begin to start living, actually living, again.

The story follows Mercy Blain after her house burns down and she finds herself lost, sad and generally very lonely. This eventually leads to take an impromptu road trip in a broken-down car she buys from a stranger and the result is a heart-warming, relatable, funny yet heartbreakingly real depiction of life when your world is turned upside down.

The writing in this novel is absolutely outstanding. It is incredibly immersive, and you feel Mercy’s hurricane of emotions from the second you descend onto the page. The feeling of panic and her dissociation from everything happening around her was beautifully captured.

Regarding the story, this was a truly engaging one to follow. Mercy’s road trip throughout Australia was a treat to read. It truly captured the sensory aspects of Australia, whether that be its rugged terrains, the warmth of the sun, the length of drives, the feeling you get when you enter a small town. Everything felt so real. I felt as though I was on this trip with Mercy.

Thank you so much to Net Galley and Harlequin Australia for giving me an Advanced Reader Copy in return for an honest review.

I will post review on Goodreads site when permitted around publication date.

Thoroughly enjoyed my journey with Mercy, Wasabi and their somewhat unreliable van, from Adelaide to Darwin. Mercy’s voice was quirky and heartfelt, as her story is gradually revealed over the course of her travels. Hiding and then running away are how Mercy deals with her grief and chronic anxiety, her complex relationship with her mother, her partner and her career, Her unplanned road trip forces connections and independence that she believes herself to be incapable of.

Mercy Blain is overcome by crippling anxiety and panic disorder. She has been unable to leave her home or interact with the outside world since a series of misfortunes sent her spiralling into despair. Then, her house burns down!

What ensues is an unlikely whirlwind adventure through the center of Australia that leads Mercy on a life affirming journey of self reflection, with a good dose of misadventure. With nothing but a clunky old van and her service dog, Wasabi, Mercy discovers her inner strength and how important connection is for the soul.

This was quite a ride! The sights, sounds and red dirt of the desert are palpable and the characters of the outback lovable and warm. Mercy is a flawed character who I found myself empathising with from the very beginning, it’s easy to see yourself in her quirks and nuances. Kim Lock has beautifully captured the intricacies of anxiety and the way that they infiltrate our ability to function in the modern world.

This is a beautiful story of self discovery, with plenty of heart and soul that will inspire you to connect to your own inner self and perhaps embark on your own outback adventure.

Thanks to NetGalley, HQ Fiction and the author for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.