I never posted my review on here. OOPS! Originally my rating was 3 stars, but after rereading I'm bumping it to 3.75. I am really excited for the sequel though. Review below:

1800’s, New Orleans, a series of mysterious killings are happening. Celine is on the case! (NOT A VAMPIRE BOOK! THEY’RE JUST BARELY THERE. SAME WITH THE ROMANCE.)

Renee Ahdieh’s writing is ok. I have yet to love one of her books, which disappoints me every turn of the way. Her books always sound phenomenal, and then fall flat. I keep buying them though, so there’s obviously something I like, I just don’t know what it is. It’s written to intrigue me enough to want to know what happens, but I won’t run around yelling at everyone to read it.

The Beautiful is about a girl named Celine who must flee her life in Paris and settles into New Orleans. While she is there, a string of murders occurs leaving everyone shaken to their core.

I’m going to put this out there. This book has 1000000000% been marketed as the book to bring Vampires back to YA. Let me tell you, IT’S NOT! Come on, obviously the murders are being committed by a vampire, that is obvious from the way the first murder is described. There are minimal vampires in this book until the last 25 pages, and even that’s questionable. I’m pretty sure the sequel will be the book to reintroduce vamps to YA. The publisher really needs to rethink how they are marketing this book.

Aside from the non-existent vampires, this book was decent. Nothing fantastic, but not terrible either. I hung on enough to want to keep reading. I was shrouded in the mystery and trying to figure out who the killer is. I had theories, but I was wrong, which is good because I have been guessing the killers lately and it makes me sad!

The Beautiful is set in the 1800’s, and that is clear by the talks of moral values (a woman not being alone with a man) and a constant mention of darker skin tones being slaves and not being allowed to do the same things as others. This doesn’t bother me because it is history, but I feel that is was only used to help set the tone for the time period.

This is still a good read if you lower your expectations and don’t listen to all the hype. I’m glad I didn’t stand in the line for this arc at Bookcon though.

Celine is decent enough. She is very two dimensional though. I didn’t feel any strong connection to her one way or another. She was just kind of there.

Bastien is also very blah. I have no other words for him.

There’s supposed to be a romance in this book, but it really fell short. It quite literally only comes into play a few pages out of the entire book.

I did not connect with the characters at all.

I’m disappointed. I want more vampires. I really hope the sequel delivers that.