Today’s review is about EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT by Ben Reeves. It’s a shorter novel narrated from the point of view of Death, also known as Travis. Though an impartial observer, he learns from a young family what it means to live.
Author: Ben Reeves
Series: None
Age Category: Adult
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publish Date: July 7, 2026
Print Length: 256
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Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt Synopsis
Synopsis
For fans of Fredrik Backman and Virginia Evans, an astonishing novel about finding beauty in the brevity of life, as narrated by the one who knows it best: Death.
Travis is Death in the modern world. He lives with his cat in a small, gray town. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life, which he does without complaint or judgement. He’s stoic, gentle, and a little naive, despite who he is, but he never tries to change anyone’s fate. He is responsible for maintaining the balance of nature, and every life must eventually end.
Then Travis meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter Layla, who live across the hall, and despite his best attempts to keep his distance, he finds himself wholeheartedly embraced by other people for the first time. So it is with this seemingly unremarkable family that Travis begins to understand what it means to be truly alive—and what might be irrevocably lost in death.
Written with radiant warmth, wisdom, and compassion, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is a timeless and ultimately uplifting story about appreciating life, accepting its end, and finding our place in the universe—especially when it feels most impossible—that will resonate with anyone who has ever loved and lost or worried about time’s passing.
Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt Review
EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT is mostly from the point of view of Travis, or Death personified. He recently moved into an apartment where he restores old photographs as a hobby of sorts. Otherwise he is everywhere all at once helping people cross over, but never trying to change their fate. But then he meets Dalia and her two young daughters across the hall. Though he tries to keep his distance, he begins to see what one loses in death.
Travis is a passive, impartial character. Nearly everything happens to him rather than him seeking out experiences. He is an observer and essentially omniscient and knows everyone’s life story. This type of personality makes sense for Travis since he cannot interfere with anyone’s death. He is not there to change things or judge, merely to provide a natural service.
The main mechanism Reeves uses to emphasize this, in my opinion, is chunks of text with streams of consciousness. This style shows the constant influx of information or observation that inundates Travis at all times. Some of these things are positive or neutral, though there is a fair share of negative things as well. Luckily Reeves doesn’t focus on the negative things (or any of the things) much during these stream-of-consciousness passages because they’re also meant to show that life continues all around us even if someone else’s stops or drastically changes.
While I think this writing mechanism works well for what Reeves wants to achieve, I’m glad the whole book wasn’t like that. Because Travis is so impartial, I also felt like it deadened the emotional impact of the story. Travis almost never has an opinion or feeling about anything, which makes it difficult to have an emotional connection with the story. (But perhaps that’s also the point.) He is Death and must remain impartial lest he upset the natural balance. It could also be that if he allows himself to feel anything, then he might feel too much. So it’s best to stay emotionally distant.
Although most of this book is from Travis’s POV, there are also passages from Dalia’s POV. She is very much alive and a bustling single mother with eight- and one-year-old daughters. She provides the much-needed human and emotional element. Throughout this story Travis visits a spattering of other folks on their death day. But Dalia’s story has a thread that carries through from the beginning to the end. I thought this was a good thing, otherwise the book would just contain slices of life of random folks. Dalia has a messy life, but it is her life and it’s full of love. This goes to show that life doesn’t have to be perfect to have a fulfilling one.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with this book. However, it wasn’t as emotionally impactful as I hoped it would be. I liked the rather unique approach to how Death “sees” the world. But I don’t see myself rereading this any time soon.
Rating: 3.5
Content warnings: death, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, death of a child, drug abuse, alcoholism, cancer
Reading format: Hardback
