🛸Beautyland - Marie-Helene Bertino🛸

This is one of those quirky books that you avoid thinking it will be too strange for you, but when you finally pick it up you can’t put it down. Our main character is Adina, who is an alien living the human experience. It was a character-driven, funny, sad, weird, beautiful story.

Beautyland is a sci-fi which explores all that encompasses living as a human, touching on themes of belonging, grief, and joy. It was such a gorgeous little story that I can definitely see myself reading again in the future. I also felt the audiobook was the perfect way to experience this book.

What you can expect:
👽 Coming of age
👽 Weird, but beautiful
👽 Alien in a human world
👽 Character driven

This book was a beautiful reminder to read outside what I normally would read. Pretty much every time I do that I love what I come across, and this was no exception!

Thank you so much to @netgalley @marie.helenebertino and @dreamscape_media for sending me an audiobook copy to review - I am beyond grateful! 🙏🏻

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This book kept getting recommended to me by readers whose taste I really love but I was a little hesitant to pick it up. Maybe it was the sci fi aspect, maybe it was the coming of age novel — two genres I typically don’t love. But it was a charming and surprisingly funny book that moved fast and kept engaged.

Beautyland was an excellent novel. I loved the exploration of beauty culture with the alien twist. The writing was quick and easy to read. Great narration

What a ride this was — I saw some bookstagrammer I trust really enjoy this, so I dove in, despite it sounding a little weirder than my usual pick. Leaning into the weird this year. As much as I love space adventures, I love when a sci fi novel manages to make us look inwards instead of outwards, and that’s exactly what Beautyland does — it presents humanity through the lens of growing up and being alien. Yes, literally, but also through the lens of just being a person alive trying to move through the world. I don’t honestly know if I enjoyed this book or not, but I did appreciate it and the way it made me think about existence and living life.

Audiobook narrated by Andi Arndt courtesy of Dreamscape Media and Netgalley.

Beautyland is a quiet story about Adina an alien. As a child, she recognizes that she is different; she also possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of earthlings.

This is a refreshingly original story with themes of coming of age and the human experience, I really enjoyed Adina’s perspective on the experience of being a teenager and trying to belong in a world that is often confusing and difficult to navigate.

I loved the story and how beautifully innocent and observant Adina was as she moved through the world and observed and participated in relationships. The way she tried to articulate these behaviors to her relatives via fax was both hilarious and eye opening.

Really enjoyed this one, thank you to Netgalley and the author for the opportunity to review this audiobook, I highly recommend the format for this book.

This was so different than any book I’ve read in a long time and I loved it!

Adina was born to a mother in Philadelphia but she’s not from earth. She appears to be human but she realizes she isn’t pretty quickly. She was sent to earth to grow up on Earth and to report her observations back to her home planet via fax machine. This book follows Adina’s entire life as she grows up and deals with everything that come with being human.

I loved the narration of this book! Andi Arndt is one of my favorite audiobook narrators!! She truly made this book that much better. I could listen to any book she reads!

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Select for giving me this an audiobook version of Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino!

"Beautyland" by Marie-Helene Bertino is an imaginative concept. It intertwines the launch of Voyager 1 with the birth of Adina Giorno. She's a child born to a human with a profound connection to space.

It explores themes of isolation, resilience, and the human quest for understanding, inviting us to ponder the mysteries of life through the eyes of a likable alien. Adina's are thought-provoking and touching.

Andi Arndt's narration of the audiobook enriches the experience, vividly portraying Adina's journey and immersing listeners in her world with depth and emotion.

I enjoyed the book at times. But, despite its compelling premise, "Beautyland" fell short of truly captivating my attention.

Special thanks to Dreamscape Media for providing an advanced listener copy of "Beautyland" through the NetGalley app.

What a wild, fun book. I love the zany quality mixed with really fun, exciting characterization. I hope this book gets read by a wide audience! 3.5 stars!

Oof! I have to be more careful about what I read. And also, did I read the same novel as everyone else?

This novel was so heavy, it threatened to drag me down into despair. I was already sinking a bit this week, and listening to this book about the pointlessness of human existence didn’t exactly lift me up.

It helped that the writing was detached to the point of almost clinical as Adina, who believes she is sent to Earth to study humans, catalogues the endless banality and pettiness of people. It’s so bad that eventually she begs her “superiors”, via fax machine, to “please, please come get me. I’m done done done”

I kept waiting for the joy to come. I spent 97% of the book feeling no emotion except hopelessness, only to sob for about three pages and then the story came to an abrupt end.

This book was such a clever, refreshing easy read. I loved the way Adina’s mind worked and how she absorbed human life and emotions. I did almost stop reading around high school because I just found that part quite dull and not as interesting by comparison to other parts. I loved watching the exploration of adulthood and intimacy. Would definitely read again. It seems like the type of book you get something new out of every time.

I am still processing the ending of this novel, and don't know that I will be able to stop thinking about in anytime soon.

Beautyland follows a girl, Adina, who is born in 1977 who understands she is an alien and was sent to earth to observe people and life on Earth. The novel follows Adina through her entire life, although I would not consider this a coming of age novel, or maybe this is just the most unique version of such a story I've ever read. If I had to describe this book in one word, I think it would be perceptive.

Some of the incredible anecdote/lines from this book include:
Referring to Star Wars as a civil war movie in space
Adulthood seems like a years long equation to beat traffic
She pretends to be one person, but she is actually six girls with J names in jean jackets
Anyone questioning whether god exists need only consider the brevity of a dog’s lifespan

I am not a person who is easily affected by books, but this book made me absolutely sob in the last third or so. It is at times incredibly funny, but also the isolation that Adina experiences throughout her life is heart-rending.

I am still trying to process the ending, having just completed the book a few minutes ago. I hope to be able to talk about the ending below, but my thoughts are beneath the spoiler text.

I am so heartbroken that Adina commits suicide in the end, but I recognize that she believes that she's going back to her people. I wonder if this is in part the author prodding us to see if we truly believe Adina or if we align with most others in Adina's life and don't believe in her identity. To that end, it was an interesting meta-commentary when Adina has her observations published and we learn about the debates that occur by other readers about whether she's faking, whether she has mental illness, or if she believes all of these things. When I started the book, I assumed that she was coded as neurodivergent, due to her misophonia and intense observations about the world and other-ness.

That aside, I am uncomfortable because the suicide still feels really close to the Heaven's Gate cult, who committed suicide believing that after they died a UFO would take their souls to another level of existence above human.

I heartily recommend this book, but do be prepared for the emotional roller coaster it will take you on. Adina's observations are incisive and she provides such an interesting point of view that I will be thinking about for a long time.

I listened to this on audio and also very much recommend it as a medium, the narrator did a wonderful job bringing life to this story.

I was provided the audiobook for free in exchange for an honest review from Dreamscape Media.

Beautyland is a satisfying glimpse into an unusual mind, full of precocious observations and a participant-observer perspective that is rarely this well executed in fiction.. The prevalence of female-friendship and relationship building is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood while the premise puts me in mind of Octavia Butler. I will be recommending this book often.

Adina is an alien born into the body of a human girl. She's given the task of observing the humans on Earth and sending her notes via fax to her fellow aliens. While some of the prose was startlingly fresh and effective, I simply could not stay focused on this story. I did not find Adina to be to be compelling, partially because I was told that she was funny more often than I experienced her actually being funny. However, I did appreciate her observations of humankind. I think, based on the other reviews I've seen, that I'm in the minority in my inability to connect with Adina and her story, so I'd definitely encourage you to give it a try if the summary intrigues you.

Plot: In 1977, as Voyager 1 is launched into space, a single mother in Philadelphia gives birth to a tiny, jaundiced baby, Adina. This baby is unique - she is born of a human mother but is not of Earth but instead of a faraway planet. She has been charged to report on humans to her home planet, which she does via a fax machine. Beautyland follows Adina from birth to adulthood as she experiences life on earth as someone separate and different.

Thoughts: I loved this book. I started it thinking it was a lighthearted comedy but it turned out to be a profound reflection on belonging, loneliness and what it means to feel alone. I loved spending time with Adina and her unique way of thinking and being. There were moments in this book that were incredibly profound - the description of the feeling when watching the last episode of a beloved TV show; what adolescence and grief and being an outsider feel like. I don't think this book will be for everyone but it definitely was for me. I know I will be thinking about it for a long time.

Many thinks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Note: The narration is overall very good but the narrator does do the man voice, which is (as always) very annoying. Fortunately, there is not much male dialogue in this book so it's not too bad.

Beautyland is the coming-of-age story of Adina, an extraterrestrial being sent to live life as a human girl. We follow Adina from childhood to adulthood, as she navigates earth and humans (specifically U.S.ians), sending her observations home via fax machine. More interestingly though, are Adina's own experiences via her thoughts, feelings, and personal relationships. Reading about humankind through Adina's alien lens is one of the best things I've ever read.

This book is an absolute gem! What a special, special book. Adina's story is so original, so clever, so stupendously enjoyable, I can barely contain my glee! I can't wait to share my glowing 5 star review with my followers ASAP!

Andi Arndt's narration was out of this world (pun intended)! She was the perfect person to be cast here. She had an alien like quality to her voice and it was just brilliant!!! Well done, team!!!

THANK YOU #partner Dreamscape for my gifted ALC.

“Beautyland” is about Adina, an alien in human skin, who was sent to earth to study how humans interact and reports back to her home planet via fax machine. Naturally, Adina doesn’t fit in. We follow her life from her childhood until her forties and observe how she struggles to find her place in this foreign world where nobody seems to understand her.
I don’t usually read a lot of sci-fi novels, but “Beautyland” sounded really promising. However, I had a really hard time getting into the novel. Adina’s childhood and teenage years felt like they lasted an eternity compared to her adulthood and I was really bored at times. I usually like when authors play with form and narration, but since I was already struggling to connect to Adina, it just confused me further.
I really liked how Adina’s observations of human life and her own experiences come together in the end and how she—all the while trying to embrace her alienness—eventually just becomes increasingly human. The novel turned out to be way more of a study of humanity than of aliens which I did like, but I was expecting it to focus more on the ‘life on another planet’ aspect, so I was a little disappointed.

Thank you, NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for providing me with an advanced reader’s copy of the audiobook of “Beautyland” in exchange for an honest review.

I found this author last year through her book Parakeet and I adored it so when I saw this book I was really excited. I was very pleasantly pleased with this book. I actually think I liked it better than the first book of hers I read.
This book was definitely just as unhinged as her others works but it still felt more grounded in a way. I also really liked the mc in this book. I think we can all relate to feeling like an alien at some point in our lives.
This was overall a very solid read and while I do not this its for everyone I do think for those who enjoy this sort of absurdist work this will be an absolute hit!

Beautyland is the story of an alien life sent to earth to learn about humanity. The result is a funny, heartwarming, and complicated narrative about what creates a full life. I have complicated feelings about this book because I LOVED the first 3/4ths of it but struggled with what is implied in the end (trying so hard to avoid spoilers!). As a neurodivergent person, I could really relate to Adina’s observations, especially in childhood and overall I really enjoyed this book. The narration in the audiobook was wonderful and really added to the experience.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for this ALC!

Beautyland is a stream of consciousness coming of age story cloaked in weird sci-fi speculative fiction. It follows the story of Adina, an alien observer born to a human mother at the same time Voyager 1 launches. As new space discoveries are made, Adina provides her people with observations about the human race and updates about her life through nightly faxes that range from descriptions of animals to makeup tutorials from 90s magazines to feelings on every movie she can get her hands on. But Adina doesn’t know if she can share this part of herself with one of her best friends, which causes strain in their relationship in a very human way. And, as she grows up, she learns that there might be other aliens like her on Earth, which makes her want to look for these others so she doesn’t feel so alone.

Adina struggles with connecting to humans while not being fully human, but is still just like every other human girl growing up feeling awkward and alone and too much all at once. I love how genuine Adina is, as well as how she feels so deeply for those she loves.

I’ll say it again: this is a stream of consciousness novel, and, while it flows in the order of a human life from childhood to adulthood, there are little diversions that appear as the important to her parts of her life are explored. This novel isn’t for everyone, but I think it’s perfect for readers who love character studies, creative writing structure, and beautiful writing.

This will probably be one of my top reads of 2024 and we’re only 18 days in. This is a story about fitting in a world that is weird and unfamiliar. Adina is an alien who gets sent to Earth to collect information of humans to her own people in space. Adina gets to experience a full human life and we as readers get to follow her through these experiences. All the good and the bad things about being a human.

This is a book and a story full of feeling and emotion, and the narration by Andi Arndt helps immensely.