{"id":947,"date":"2026-06-11T17:01:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/?p=947"},"modified":"2026-06-11T17:01:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T22:01:35","slug":"everything-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt-by-ben-reeves-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/947\/everything-was-beautiful-and-nothing-hurt-by-ben-reeves-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves (Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Everything<\/a>Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt<\/a>
\n(A Novel)
\nby Ben Reeves<\/p>\n

Pub Date: July 07 2026<\/p>\n

Avid Reader Press | Simon & Schuster
\nGeneral Fiction (Adult)<\/p>\n

DESCRIPTION\/SYNOPSIS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

An unforgettable and exquisitely moving novel about finding beauty, hope, and meaning in the brevity of life, as narrated by the one who knows it best: Death.<\/p>\n

Travis is Death in the modern world. He wears jeans and a T-shirt and lives in a small, grey town. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life. He\u2019s stoic, gentle, and a little naive, despite everything he knows. He\u2019s young and handsome, despite who he is. Each death he witnesses is meaningful to him; he listens, never judges, and most importantly, never tries to change anyone\u2019s fate. He knows that every life must eventually end to maintain the balance of the universe and he respects the cycle.<\/p>\n

Then he meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, who live across the hall. As Dalia and Layla come to embrace Travis, it becomes more difficult to maintain the detachment that\u2019s allowed him to function for so long. Their time together teaches him what\u2019s truly important in life\u2014and what might be irrevocably lost in death.<\/p>\n

Written with radiant warmth, wisdom, and compassion, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is a timeless story about appreciating life, accepting its end, and finding our place in the universe\u2014especially when it feels most impossible\u2014that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost or worried at time\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

REVIEW:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Travis is Death, personified. It’s right there in the book description but I, as a genre enthusiast, was hoping for a bit more information about the business side of Death (the character) and\u00a0 Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt<\/strong><\/a> remains relatively vague on that aspect of Travis. What I mean is that I was expecting an urban fantasy telling of the nuts and bolts of Death’s job. (For example, I speculated that he might be one of many “Deaths” in the world, or that he assumed the role for a certain period of time before handing off the responsibility to the next in line.) It’s intimated that he’s everywhere, all the time, in a ‘death is ubiquitous’ explanation. And the author tells us in so many words that conceiving of Death in those terms would be too hard for mortal minds to comprehend. Or relate.<\/p>\n

Instead, we follow Travis\/Death through a curated series of deaths in all different types of circumstances, some tragic, some melancholic, others as a relief to suffering. These episodes make the novel feel like a series of unrelated anecdotes, with the one throughline being Travis’ relationship to Dalia and her two children (who live across the hall from him), especially Layla, the older, eight-year-old daughter. Dalia becomes, in a way, Travis’ true north in his desire to feel what humans feel, to comprehend love and death and the magnitude of grief, all of which remains beyond his understanding.<\/p>\n

The anecdotal nature of the novel also provides camouflage for a bit of legerdemain, or sleight of hand, in the plot, which delivers the gamut of emotional responses to the lives lived\u2014and the deaths witnessed by Travis. Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt<\/em> reads like a mood poem, forcing us to witness death in all it’s permutations so that we learn to celebrate life, to seize the day, reminding us until the last page that the number of our days are limited, our time here finite. And how even twenty minutes of living is a gift beyond measure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: I received an eGalley of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt<\/strong><\/a> from the publisher via NetGalley in consideration of an unbiased review.<\/p>\n

This site is a member of the Amazon affiliate partnership program. As such, any sales resulting from links to Amazon products on these pages might generate a small commission for the site, which helps keep the proverbial lights on—but does not affect the price you pay at Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt (A Novel) by Ben Reeves Pub Date: July 07 2026 Avid Reader Press | Simon & Schuster General Fiction (Adult) DESCRIPTION\/SYNOPSIS: An unforgettable and exquisitely moving novel about finding beauty, hope, and meaning in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}