When you think of vampires + new orleans, you think of The Originals, my all times favorite tv shows. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. Actually it was a total let down.
This book is about a girl name Celine who immigrates to New Orleans to start a fresh life after a crime she commit in France. There she meets someone named Sebastian who she’s NOT supposed to see but ends up doing so anyways and also having murders following her everywhere she goes.
The thing about Ahdieh’s books is that, the summaries sound so good but when you actually read the book, it’s not as good at the summary. Now I read her Wrath and the Dawn duology and I absolutely loved it. I read her Flame and the Mist book, was okay but nowhere as good as her debut novel. And now the Beautiful, I can say the same thing.
For sure, Ahdieh writing talents lie in the settings. This book focuses more on the settings and does a good job being specific in details of places, dresses, and food but sometimes it’ll get too detailed to the point it gets boring and just takes up too much time. My other problem was I guess the inner dialogue or Celine’s “thoughts”. Sometimes she would be having a conversation and her thoughts would be so much to the point it looks like she has more conversations in her head than actual conversations with other people, if that makes sense.
The romance was pretty blah. Sort of insta-lovey and Celine hyped up Bastien to be this handsome devil or dangerous but he’s mortal and regular and doesn’t really do anything special to seem like he’s dangerous. This whole time I was thinking he was a vampire but nope he’s human. Also there’s barely even vampires in this book. I mean yeah there is but you don’t really see much vampire action and Celine doesn’t even know the existence of vampires until the END of the book so I’m just thinking “Why have vampires when you barely see true VAMPIRES?” and my other issue with the setting is that it’s set in 1870. I believe this book should’ve been set in a more modern time like today’s time or even the early 1920s because it seems everyone is so equal during that time when clearly everything wasn’t from the skin color, to gender, and sexual orientation.
This book didn’t tell a bad story, I did enjoy it and I will be reading the second book. In conclusion, don’t expect too much from this book. It still reads as another vampire book you would’ve read in 2011 with detailed settings. This wasn’t the best book to use as the resurgence of vampires but hopefully Jay Kristoff’s new upcoming book that features vampires will be the new face of it.
I rate this three stars!
Thanks for reading! 🎃
-Cayla
In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and—especially—to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s leader, the enigmatic Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of La Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sébastien’s guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.
When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose—one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.
At once a sultry romance and a thrilling murder mystery, master storyteller Renée Ahdieh embarks on her most potent fantasy series yet: The Beautiful.
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