I constantly alternated as I read Beautiful World between thinking that it was Rooney's best writing and her worst. It certainly seems to be her most experimental, and her most direct, and there's no question that it's very well written in general. So I'd recommend it to fans of her other work, because at worst you'll find the differences interesting, if not an improvement.

I feel a bit like I could write a whole essay on the book without giving it a worthwhile review, so it's hard to say whether people who aren't familiar with Rooney would like it. Like her other work, it's heavily character driven and has some exceptionally well-written personal moments. Like her other work, these moments slow together so well that any given sentence or paragraph feels incomplete without the chapter's worth of context before and after it.

I think for that kind of writing alone, it's probably worth picking up. But there were other moments where I felt let down. At some points the novel is especially direct in its themes, almost to the point of being didactic, and it's unclear whether Rooney is directly expressing her own thoughts, or illustrating something about the characters'. This isn't an issue in itself. These moments are well justified by the novel, this sort of artistic experimentation is presumably the point, and there is no reason to expect Rooney to separate herself and her characters. But I couldn't help feeling that these moments broke up the otherwise seamless flow of the novel in a jarring way. Almost between chapters, the novel can flip between subtle, understated, personal moments and broad, didactic, metaphysical musings. If it were two novels instead of one, I think I would have adored both, but the combination was awkward.

Rooney's a good enough writer that I enjoyed the whole experience, but her style can be divisive at the best of times, and I get the feeling Beautiful World will get a mixed reception even among fans.