“The hardest part about explaining this book is using the right words. The main character is born…well, this is what I’m talking about. Deformed? Disfigured? His face, it isn’t quite shaped like a normal face. A couple dozen surgeries later and he’s still not normal. The thing is, you get so attached to the character, so emotionally involved, that it’s hard to use words like Misshapen or Twisted or any of the other handy synonyms.
Sometimes it helps to look at the antonyms to get a feel for the word you’re seeking, but in this case, antonyms like Beautified and Smoothed just broke my heart.
What can I say? The characters are wonderful, the story is wonderfully sad in places. The title is a fit.”