SuitabookHideous Beauty
William Hussey
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person rather than rushing through the mystery. Pause after difficult sections to discuss reactions, and agree beforehand that they can stop or postpone the book if its darker subjects feel too immediate.
- Themes
- Coming out and LGBTQ+ identity: Dylan is forced to come out after an intimate video of him and Ellis is published online. The story places LGBTQ+ identity, coming out and the social effects of exposure at its centre, while showing Dylan’s relationship with Ellis as emotionally significant.
- Grief, memory and truth: After Ellis dies, Dylan investigates the accident and questions his own recollections, receiving clues while discovering that he may not have known Ellis as well as he believed. The mystery uses grief and uncertainty to examine how Dylan reconstructs events and revises his understanding of someone he loved.
- Friendship during difficulty: Mike supports Dylan after the accident while undergoing cancer treatment and managing the effects of illness on his own life and family. The book presents this mainly as information or explanation.
- Worth knowing
- Content deserving preparation includes a fatal accident and drowning, grief and loss, drug use, cancer, physical and mental abuse, rape references, and sexual references.