"[Beautyland] is interested in the charged terrain of uncertainty and the tender ideas that emerge when we poke at the unknown . . . From this gorgeous data of existence, Bertino taps into a particular nostalgic awe familiar to a generation of kids raised on Carl Sagan and inflatable lunchroom planetariums . . . [Adina] continues to hope for something beyond humanity, something better, and what could be more human than that?"
--Hilary Leichter, BOMB

"[An] excavation of the strange and wonderful and heart-wrenching realities of what it means to be alive down here on Earth . . . In Beautyland, that which is wonky and uncanny reveals itself in the familiar details of everyday life . . . This is where the sorcery lives . . . When Bertino writes of magic, of science fiction, of the surreal, she is writing of reality."
--Madison Ford, Brooklyn Rail

"A singular novel with a singular protagonist who has a singular view of the world . . . Wonderfully quirky, funny, bittersweet. . . A very funny and empathetic book that unravels the contradictions, complexities, and weirdness of this thing we call life."
--Ian Mond, Locus Magazine

"A compelling, touching story that weds Bertino's masterful eye for the poignant detail of the everyday with her equally virtuosic flair as a teller of the tallest kinds of tales--so tall, in this case, they are interplanetary. A heartbreaking book that staggers with both truth and beauty."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"The triumphant latest from Bertino offers a wryly comic critique of social conventions from the perspective of a woman who also happens to be an alien from another planet . . . Bertino nimbly portrays her protagonist's alienhood as both metaphor and reality. The results are divine."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Expertly imagination-bending . . . With so much humor and heart, Bertino balances fantasy and hyperrealism, metaphor and fact . . . It's like fiction was invented for Adina and her tale, which unspools so assuredly readers might mistake it for their own."
--Annie Bostrom, Booklist (starred review)

"This book is endlessly surprising on the sentence level, but also as a story, and also in its tenderness. We might all need the unexpected love and perspective of a child alien at this point in human history. Beautyland is beautiful and hilarious and transcendent. It honestly feels like a message from another planet. Marie-Helene Bertino is an otherworldly talent."
--Tommy Orange, author of There, There

"In Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino's Adina (maybe an alien, maybe a troubled human, always both) takes the tired old world and describes it so perfectly that we see it as if for the first time. Sparkling and alive, funny and magnificently true, this book woke me up. It made me weep with appreciation for the hard, strange, small-but-huge lives we lead. It made me fall back in love with this universe."
--Ramona Ausubel, author of The Last Animal

"Beautyland is both an otherworldly and completely human look into one girl's life, written in concise, lyrical prose. It is richly allusive, funny, and hypersmart. Marie-Helene Bertino has knocked it out of the park with this one. I loved it."
--Brandon Hobson, author of The Removed

"Marie-Helene Bertino's delicious, uncanny vision throughout Beautyland makes everything feel brand-new. The chapters are so propulsive one doesn't even fully notice the way she's subtly deconstructing the world. One page swiftly returns ubiquity to wonder, while the next reminds us that cruelty is a choice, that nothing is inevitable but death. It's impossible for a book to feel this fun and this urgent. Beautyland is a miracle. I'll be rereading it forever."
--Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!