[Book Review] The Beauty of the Moment by Tanaz Bhathena

Synopsis (from Goodreads) :

Susan is the new girl—she’s sharp and driven, and strives to meet her parents’ expectations of excellence. Malcolm is the bad boy—he started raising hell at age fifteen, after his mom died of cancer, and has had a reputation ever since.

Susan’s parents are on the verge of divorce. Malcolm’s dad is a known adulterer.

Susan hasn’t told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn’t know what he wants—until he meets her.

Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other. The ways they drift apart and come back together are testaments to family, culture, and being true to who you are.

My rating :

4.5/5 stars.

My review :

I was personally in love with the cover when I found out about this book – you can clearly judge or even justify that the beauty is real.

Staring Susan Thomas as the main character, The Beauty of the Moment by Tanaz Bhathena has everything a reader (like me) would ever want in a contemporary book – friendship, family relationship, romance, etc. I have so many positive things to justify my rating for this book. Let us begin with the book review, shall we?

Let us start with the plot. I had a great time going through the plot, as I managed to finish this in two days (well, for a slow reader like me, that is considered fast!) and grasped everything in that short period of time. The plot was interesting, as it was not that simple and light as how I thought it would be. Based on the synopsis, Susan Thomas was a new student in Canada – she used to be in Saudi Arabia before. I appreciated Tanaz’s attempt to make the story fabulous by including every important aspect as good as possible. I loved the conflict in this story, as it slowly made Susan a better character and a girl who we should look up to. Her family relationship was not beautiful, and I understood how it affected her, especially when she had a dream of her own. The romance had quite a heavy flow, for me. Nonetheless, I still accepted it with an open heart. The plot was agreeable and interestingly fun. So full marks for the plot!

Next, I will be focusing on the characters. For me, personally, being in Canada with her mother had changed Susan’s personality, especially after she made an acquaintance with Malcolm. But that did not represent a bad thing, as it allowed Susan to have her very own character growth. For the characters, I loved how this story had good characters and bad characters been crafted wonderfully. I loved Susan, as her determination sort of related to mine. I definitely loved Malcolm, as he was such an interesting character, who had amazing character growth, just like Susan. Other minor characters in this book were intriguingly interesting as well!

Furthermore, Tanaz’s writing style for this book was beautiful. It was casual and nice, made the flow of the story became easier for readers to grasp tightly. The writing style definitely fit in with the main genre of this book, which is young adult contemporary, and I personally believed – I still do! – that this story would be perfect for readers under 20. Well, that is just an opinion. My opinions may differ from yours, so no offence!

However, there were certain parts where I thought could face improvements. As for the long distance friendship, I wish that the author could do more to it, as to make it less irritating. Forgive me, but I found the long distance friendship in this book was a bit irritating, as both parties involved in it were not exactly showing their best to maintain the friendship that they have built. I wanted them to show effort, and not just throwing excuses here and there. I could not feel the love and the endeavour of protecting their friendship. Somehow, I thought the friendship between Susan and Alisha could actually end, and I definitely did not want that to happen. Well, that’s what I thought. Other than this friendship thing, I had wished that the conflict for the romance could be more interesting. I would not mind if it was a bit dramatic, but it was cliché for me. Yes, I found it a bit predictable, and I personally do not like predictable stuffs.

Overall, this story was enjoyable and acceptable. If you are looking for agreeable stories that you can or want to relate, this should be one of the stories in your list!

My final rating for this book is 4.5 out of 5 stars. Highly recommend!