The Beautiful

Not enough character development. The flowery writing lacks depth and emotion. The characters seem 2D. Needs to worldbuild without lengthy, useless descriptions. Show us more action, less exposition! Bastien & Celine didn’t have enough time or action to fall in love.

I feel like in a series it’s always hard to finish through because the author always drags things out.. but this series is a little different. I recommend this book and I think it’s worth your time to read it. The FL is definitely a refresher. She’s bold and ambitious in a way that ignites and inspires me. She’s not a willowy character who can’t stand her own. She represents women beautifully and this book was amazingly written.

“Rage is a moment. Regret is forever.” Okay so, there were parts of this I enjoyed. And other parts not so much. Let’s start with the goodies: 1) Loved the historic New Orleans backdrop 2) Thank you for making vamps a bit more ferocious and a bit less sparkly and kind hearted 3) ODETTE WAS THE BEST CHARACTER ANYONE CAN FIGHT ME ABOUT IT 4) Very happy with the representation of different races and cultural backgrounds. Done well and didn’t feel like the author was just shoving it in there for the sake of diversifying 5) I was here for the heroine slaying her potential rapist. You go girl. Onto the things that kept me from enjoying this more: 1) yawn with the vampire/werewolf clan love triangle. Bastien or Michael oh no! 2) felt kind of like a mix of Underworld and Twilight? But I would have liked more Underworld and less Twilight. 3) it felt more and more like Twilight when I REALLY didn’t want it to. Like, it started so good. We need to give some of those tropes a rest y’all. 4) I didn’t find Celine very likeable. Maybe I was missing her rapier wit, or maybe I just wasn’t into how hot everyone made her out to be. I’m kind of over the overly beautiful heroine trope. I feel like something was missing in her character. 5) the twist of who was narrating the first person chapters was pretty lame. and tbh I could have done without those chapters altogether. 6) aaaannnd nothing really wowed me. I skimmed a loooot the second half just to get this book over with. Overall, it was kind of fun for what it was worth. But I don’t think I’ll be picking up the sequel.

I thought it was a good book that had an ending that I did not see coming. But it felt like it took forever to get there. I also really liked that the book encorporated other languages, but sometimes the book did not tell you what it meant.

This is by far my favorite book. Everything about it is completely and underly obsessive. The characters, the setting, the plot. The authors words melting together so beautifully, it’s like a delicious and tantalizing whisper. I couldn’t stop reading, i finished in a day... :(

This book was out of this world! The beauty of the way she describes the scene brings absolute joy!

This was a great read and had an ending I was not expecting. Celine is the heroine of my dreams, I love girl who doesn’t take crap from anyone. My only con for this book was that Ahdieh can go a little overboard with describing a scene. I love the piture it paints but it gets a little crazy if I find myself skimming over paragraphs because of it.