The City Beautiful

by Aden Polydoros

[lessthelonely]

4/5 stars.

This book was a nice surprise.

I wasn't expecting to like this book so much, especially when I started reading it and found out that it was basically historical fiction. I'm not the biggest fan of historical fiction, it either tends to lose me with way too much detail on history that tends to not pull me in but drive me away from it - namely, when the "history" is mainly white. I already learned about what white supremacists want people like me to think history is like. I don't need to read it when I'm trying to get entertained. Or when the plot seems to be non-existent for most of the book and then comes full force at the end, which makes everything until then incredibly dull and like I'm just reading to finish it.

This book was a nice surprise since it felt like a slow burn. The truth is that the beginning was incredibly slow - in between reading sessions, I went to Goodreads and saw one of the BookTokers I follow, Ayman (@aymanbooks), reviewing this book and mentioning it could get somewhat close, so I was like, OK, at least I'm sort of warned. The first chapter is way too long for its own good, for starters. I didn't feel like I was reading a thriller, as I'm used to having a cold open (the thrilling event that the plot will spawn from or revolve around).

But I kept reading. If you DNF a book without even finishing a chapter, then you're clearly just looking for an excuse to DNF it when you could simply read something that could satiate your reading needs. I wasn't expecting this book to satiate mine, but it did.

The lows of this book are the slow moments and, honestly, the reveals. I felt like the reveals, while definitely thrilling in the way they were executed and how they played out, weren't really that jaw-dropping. I wasn't really invested in the characters revealed to be scum, so in that department, the reveals didn't hit. What did hit, however, were the fight scenes and the whole action that happened around these reveals. Incredible. Sweat-inducing, to be honest.

There were also some moments where the tension felt a little bit fabricated, just to either make characters clash or simply have a sort of thrill. Not even close to the reveals, just some moments that happen when some characters are introduced.

Speaking of characters, the way these characters have me on a chokehold, especially the main character and what I would consider the main love interest - the pining, the yearning, incredible. I didn't really like the ON/OFF approach after the first big moment, but I do think it's a very positive and soft romance, which is ironic because this book is incredibly dark. Check trigger warnings, please!

But all and all, just for the fact this surprised me, I consider this a great book. The Jewish references were extremely interesting, and a glossary is included. Even if it wasn't included, no excuses. This is a great book. READ IT.