A review by ana24gs
The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh

reflective slow-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

 
“A goddess did not concern herself with the triflings of men” 

I really liked the book. Although I think that it could have been a little longer, that way it would be much better. It met some of my expectations, it did not meet others, but it remains in my mind as a good memory. 

I really like the premise of the book, Celine is a girl with a dark secret that forces her to escape from Paris, to move to New Orleans and start a new life leaving the tragedy in her past, but tragedy follows her to New Orleans where she is immersed in a world of dark creatures. 

As I already mentioned, I liked the book, from the premise to the characters it seemed very solid, but I did not believe the relationships between the characters, specifically any that involved my beloved Sébastien Saint Germain. And that's my biggest problem, the book should have been longer and I think there would have been more time to show Bastien's relationship with his “family” (La Cour des Lions). 

Celine, the main character, seemed very interesting, I liked her very much. She is a girl who wants to live life to the fullest, she doesn't want to be limited. And in this book we see her moving toward accepting and understanding her past. 

But we return with my last comments against this book, I did not like how the conflict was resolved in the end, neither of the two conflicts was resolved as I would have liked, but well. I guess that's the magic of reading a book, sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like. 

 ⚠️SPOILERS⚠️

Sébastien Saint Germain: Aka, the reason why I got forty heart attacks while reading the book. He had me at his feet from the moment I read his name, and then I saw his attitude, and fcgvhbjnkml, what can I say, what a man really, what a man. As I said at the beginning, it is unfortunate that being a character with so much potential I felt that Renée did not take advantage of it, the relationship that I liked the most where he was involved, apart from the one he has with Celine, is the one he has with Odette, I felt that sibling relationship. The lack of depth in his other relationships made me care very little if another member of the order died and that Nigel's betrayal felt very neh. I must also say that I feel somewhat dumb because throughout the book I thought that Sébastien was a vampire, only to find out at the end that he was not, and I don't know if that's how it was supposed to be or I'm just very clueless when reading (what is most likely). I swear that when he almost dies, I die. 

Celine: I think what I like the most about her is that I empathize with her discomfort, she killed a man, and obviously killing is not right, but that man was going to hurt her and she had every right to fight at any cost. Her internal monologue seems very interesting to me, not only because of her thoughts of whether it was okay to kill him or not, but also her desire to have power, to be able to generate a desire of respect for her in people just by standing in front of them and I think that I feel the same in that regard. 

I proceed to complain about the final reveal:

I hope you know that I liked when Nigel capture Celine and Bastien came looking for her, a lot. But the reveal that came with that part was disappointing, I honestly thought Michael was the bad guy, and I guess maybe it was a very obvious choice and Renée wanted to do something unexpected, but I don't know, I feel like it was very out of nowhere. Perhaps in the second book I understand the sister's intentions better, because I still do not fully understand her motivations for doing everything she did. 

The final deal:

I hate, I HATE, when one of the protagonists loses his memory, I hate it, I don't like it at all. And now, I will have to read the second book to see how Celine either recovers her memories in a mystical way, or falls in love again with Sébastien. I really refuse to read her relationship with Michael (he does not seem like a bad guy, but he is very insistent). 

Although there are things that I did not love, I do not consider it a bad book, so I plan to continue reading those that follow, although I know what the third one is going to be about and it demotivates me a bit, but let's see how the second goes. 

“We forget our dreams, but nightmares linger with us evermore”

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