I saw the cover of The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and was immediately drawn to it. Then I read the summary and knew I wanted to read this as it mixes historical with fantasy and this has become one of my favorite genres. The story centers on three characters, Nina, Hector, and Valerie.

Nina is in Loisail for her first grand season and is under the guidance of her cousin’s wife, Valerie. Unfortunately for Nina, Valerie isn’t very welcoming and add to that the fact that Nina has hard time controlling her telekinetic powers, Nina isn’t exactly happy. When she meets Hector, a telekinetic performer, two things happen. First, Nina gains control over her powers and she isn’t as much of a danger. And second, she falls in love with Hector.

I really wanted to hit Hector a number of times throughout this story. See, he is being quite deceptive with Nina as he has ulterior motives to being around her. Hector comes from nothing really but when he met Valerie years ago, he wanted to be something more and be able to provide for her. Hector ended up leaving Valerie behind so that he could earn his fortune and come back for her, but Valerie ended up marrying a man she didn’t love to save her family. Now that Hector is back and somewhat famous, he wants her back in his life, but Valerie is not the same person he left behind, and her bitterness pushes him toward Nina with his only goal being to make Valerie jealous and want him back.

Valerie is just angry and bitter, and she takes it out on Nina. She does whatever she can to make life hell for Nina and when Hector puts Nina right in the middle of their past, she takes the brunt of Valerie’s anger.

This is very much a character driven story and while a bit slow at times, I found I needed to keep reading to find out what was going to happen next for them all. There were times I was frustrated and angry and each one of them and poor Nina had no clue what she was getting into. Overall, I enjoyed this book and look forward to checking out more of her books.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the review copy.