Abby stops her car on a cliff road after seeing a body in the street and gets out to help.

Grady listens helplessly on the phone as Abby goes silent and disappears without a trace.

Grady visits his agent Kitty Goldman, who offers him the late Charles Whittaker's writing cabin on the Isle of Amberly.

Ferrywoman Sandy MacIntyre informs Grady that non-residents cannot bring their cars onto the Isle of Amberly.

Grady discovers human hand bones arranged on a velvet cushion beneath the cabin's floorboard.

Hidden near the hand bones, Grady finds an unpublished manuscript left behind by Charles Whittaker.

Grady mails Kitty Goldman a book proposal built entirely around ideas stolen from Charles Whittaker's manuscript.

Over dinner at Midge's house, Midge reveals that Sandy is the island's sheriff and hints at past unsolved crimes.

After weeks of editing, Grady mails Kitty the completed manuscript he has rewritten from Charles's stolen work.

Pub owner Arabella reveals that Sandy MacIntyre was Charles Whittaker's trusted first reader for all his drafts.

At Darkside Cave, Sandy confirms to Grady that she read Charles's unpublished Book Ten manuscript.

Driving through the mist, Grady hits a woman with his car and discovers she is his missing wife Abby.

Abby reveals that Grady disguised himself as a body on the cliff road, then drugged and threw her over the edge.

Kitty decrees that Grady must remain on the island permanently as resident author, donating all book earnings to the community.

Grady wakes in complete darkness and realises he has been buried alive inside a coffin by the islanders.

Beautiful Ugly opens with Abby Goldman mysteriously disappearing after stopping on a cliff road, leaving her husband Grady Green devastated and unable to write. A year later, Grady accepts his agent Kitty Goldman's offer to use the late Charles Whittaker's remote cabin on the Isle of Amberly, hoping to restart his career. On the island, he discovers Charles's unpublished final manuscript and makes the desperate decision to steal the idea and pass it off as his own work. His plan begins to unravel when he learns that ferrywoman Sandy MacIntyre read all of Charles's drafts — including the stolen one — and then, driving through the mist, he collides with a woman he realises is Abby, alive and with no memory of him. The truth finally comes out when Abby confronts Grady and reveals that he faked his own death to lure her from the car and threw her from the cliff to stop her from leaving him. The islanders, led by Kitty, force Grady to remain as their resident author — a sentence that ultimately ends with the community burying him alive.

The headline events that drive Grady's story from beginning to end.

Before Abby arrives home, Kitty calls Grady to announce his latest book has made the New York Times bestseller list.

On the ferry to Amberly, Grady spots a woman who looks just like Abby and races after her, losing her.

Sandy MacIntyre drives Grady to Charles's cabin and explains the island has no phones, internet, or cell service.

Grady picks up the ringing phone in a supposedly inoperable phone booth and hears only the sound of the ocean.

Sandy drives Grady to the House on the Hill for dinner with her sister Midge MacIntyre.

Grady opens an envelope slipped under the cabin door containing Abby's article about a wrongfully convicted woman named Coraline Thatcher.

Grady visits the local church, meets Reverend Melody Bates, and donates his wedding band to the building repair fund.

An elderly woman appears in the island cemetery and warns Grady to leave before something bad happens to him.

Cora Christie gives Grady bog myrtle tea at her corner shop, promising the blend will cure his insomnia.

Sandy delivers a printer to the cabin and reveals that Charles Whittaker's old car has been sitting in the shed.

Grady walks Orphans Footpath and Reverend Melody tells him the history of the island children who drowned in the cave.

Grady finds an envelope under the cabin door containing Abby's journalism article about the women's #MeToo protests in London.

Grady drives to The Croft and meets Travers Fairlight, who confirms she is Abby's wife and they have a baby named Holly.

Grady reaches Kitty through the island phone booth and she warns him to flee before the call abruptly cuts out.

After packing his bags to escape the island, Grady is stopped in his tracks when he sees Sandy standing outside the church.

The secondary events of Beautiful Ugly trace the smaller but significant moments that build the island's atmosphere of mystery and entrapment around Grady. From the moment Kitty announces his bestseller status and he travels north to Scotland, he begins encountering strange signs — a woman who looks like Abby on the ferry, a ringing phone booth that plays only ocean sounds, and envelopes of old journalism articles left under his cabin door. The island community slowly comes into focus through Grady's visits to Cora's shop, the church, the pub, and dinners with Sandy and Midge, each encounter adding a piece to the larger puzzle. As Grady's isolation deepens — aided unknowingly by hallucinogenic tea and the absence of any outside communication — he finds himself unable to leave, his plans to escape quietly sabotaged at every turn. The discovery of Travers Fairlight at The Croft and a cut-off warning call from Kitty accelerate his paranoia as his attempts to flee collapse around him. These events collectively show how the island methodically closes in on Grady long before he understands what is happening.

The secondary moments that shaped Grady's time on the island.

A week before her disappearance, Abby visits a therapist and confesses that she wants to leave her husband Grady.

Abby tells the therapist about being sexually abused by her childhood piano teacher and her mother's violent response.

When Sandy visits the cabin, Grady checks beneath the floorboard and finds the hand bones have mysteriously vanished.

After reading Abby's article, Grady begins to suspect that Cora Christie is actually Coraline Thatcher, the wrongfully convicted woman.

Grady spots a face peering through the cabin window and later finds the harmonica from Charles's desk has disappeared.

Pub owner Arabella reveals that bog myrtle tea, which Cora has been giving Grady for weeks, is known to cause hallucinations.

Grady opens a letter from Kitty warning that the people living on the island are not who they claim to be.

Abby tells the therapist that if she ever left Grady, she would return to the Isle of Amberly as her true home.

At Midge's house, Grady finds childhood photographs of Abby on the island and a wedding photo showing the entire island community.

Back at the cabin, Grady opens the Beautiful Ugly studio pamphlet and sees the owner's photograph is not Abby's face.

Abby reveals she grew up on the island and accidentally led her young classmates into Darkside Cave where they drowned.

Abby confirms that Cora is Coraline Thatcher, that Arabella is her daughter, and that the island women killed the negligent substitute teacher.

Kitty reveals she was Charles Whittaker's wife and that Charles died by suicide out of guilt over the children's deaths.

Kitty explains to Grady that Abby was secretly undergoing IVF treatments and was already pregnant when he attacked her.

A year into his island life, Grady goes to bed feeling proud and content, certain the islanders have fully accepted him.

The turning points and revelations of Beautiful Ugly are anchored in Abby's parallel therapy sessions, which steadily expose truths about her marriage that Grady's narration conceals. While Grady experiences escalating strangeness on the island — vanishing hand bones, a face at the window, and the eventual discovery that his calming tea has been causing his hallucinations — Abby quietly discloses her desire to escape him, her traumatic childhood, and her secret intention to return to Amberly. A warning letter from Kitty signals that the island's inhabitants know far more about Grady than he realises, and discoveries at Midge's house and inside a studio pamphlet confirm that Abby has been building a hidden life on the island all along. In a cascade of confessions, Abby reveals she accidentally led island children to their deaths as a girl, and that the women who live there have since rebuilt their community around shared trauma and a fierce protectiveness of one another. The final revelations expose that Kitty was Charles Whittaker's wife, that Abby was already pregnant via secret IVF when Grady attacked her, and that every uncanny event on the island was part of a long-planned reckoning. Grady's misplaced contentment as the island's resident author makes his burial all the more devastating as a consequence he never saw coming.