The Beautiful
By Renée Ahdieh
Genre: YA Historical Fantasy/Paranormal
Recommended For: Ages 15+, vampire enthusiasts, those who like a little hint of magic mixed into their history lessons.
Warnings: Memories of an attempted rape are referred to throughout the book
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.
The Hit List
- Visually appealing in the atmospheric world of 19th Century New Orleans
- Dark and mysterious bad boy
- Well plotted mystery with suspense
- Features vampires and other characters with magical abilities
- Slow paced, especially in the beginning
- Main character had little impact on the plot
- Weak romantic sub-plot line
The Review:
Set in the magically enticing world of New Orleans in 1872, The Beautiful starts with the arrival of Celine in the lively city. Celine, who is attempting to escape her past in Paris, quickly falls in love with the city and is mesmerized by the enigmatic characters in the infamous La Cour des Lions, a group with mafia-like feels. Most of all, Celine is drawn to its ringleader, Sebastien, who, as all good bad boys do, only invites trouble into her life.
Ahdieh is a wonderful author and one of my favs. However, this book failed to impress me as much as some of her others. But I always like to try and start on a positive note. So let’s start with her setting and world building. This, in my opinion, is one of the areas Ahdieh shines most throughout her repertoire. Ahdieh gives the reader a full, five senses description of this beautiful city. I loved how she not only described how buildings, furniture, rooms, clothing, etc looked, but how it felt and how the food smelled and tasted and what the city sounded like during the day verses during the night. I’ve never visited the city, but in a way, after reading this book, I feel like I have. At least New Orleans in the late 1800s.
The story is set up to be a mystery, trying to figure out who is committing the string of murders in New Orleans. And Ahdieh does an excellent job of keeping the reader in suspense about who the murderer could be and what is really going on. This sense of the unknown is the primary tool that propelled the story forward for me. Though it was rather disappointing that it was so plot driven. Very little of what Celine did affected the plot. You could plop any young girl into the story and the exact same thing would happen. It would have been nice for the protagonist to have more influence over what happened in the story.
Another issue I had with the story is that the characters felt one dimensional and underdeveloped. Celine was too razor focused on one thing from her past to give her any depth. And Bastien is your typical bad boy, which I love, but mainly because as the story goes on we slowly see a different side of the bad boy. This was never really fleshed out in my opinion, the reader was left to assume he was a bad boy with a heart of gold.
My biggest let down was the romance. After the breath-taking romantic stories Ahdieh has written before, this one fell far short for me. Number one, Celine and Bastien weren’t together all that often. When Celine started waxing poetic about him, I didn’t understand how she could have feelings for him after knowing so little of him. She didn’t strike me as the type of character to fall for a guy simply because he was pretty, but that’s what it felt like. And when two love birds aren’t together, there’s no romantic tension. The reason I love the payoff kissing scene is because there has been this path of butterfly-inducing tension between them leading up to it, but that was sorely lacking in The Beautiful.
A few other aspects about the novel felt forced. Celine’s constant inner struggle about her dark side felt forced and unbelievable (sometimes contradictory to other things she said). And some of the obstacles thrown in the way of the main characters were undeveloped and too much telling the reader something instead of showing us why.
And yes, there were some pacing issues, mainly with too much of Celine milling about town in awe of the spirit of New Orleans. I love a good setting description, but not at the sacrifice of a sense of danger in what is trying to be a thriller-esque novel.
All in all, The Beautiful had a lot of down falls. But I didn’t ever find myself wanting to stop for good, so I take that as a good sign. And there were enough good qualities in it and enough intrigue as the end that I will for sure be reading the sequel. And if I knew someone liked vampire books and history, I would probably recommend this to them still.
Luna’s Lucky Rating: 3/5 Lunas
