Hey there guys! I’m writing this review after finishing Lady Midnight. That epilogue had me shook!!! I don’t know if I’ll review the Shadowhunter series this year because I just want to read them. Maybe someday I might sit down and write the reviews for all the books, but I don’t want to review it like I usually do. With that being said, let’s dive into today’s post.
As I’m busy till May 10, I’ll be writing mini-reviews for the next few days. With this little info, let’s move to the review.
About the Book
Title: The Beautiful Ones • By: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Publishing on: 27 Apr 2021 • By: Jo Fletcher Books (Quercus Books)
Pace: Fast • Pages: 320 • Age: 13+
Standalone • Genre: Historical-Fantasy-Romance
Song: Into Paris
They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.
When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.
But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina — and
himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.
I received a copy of this book from Jo Fletcher Books (Quercus Books) courtesy of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
Rep: quirky and uncoventional protagonist, Age Gap relationship
• Context
The plot of this book was pretty simple to grasp. It felt like I was watching a period drama. Though it was set in France, I felt the conventions–the pressure on women to find a husband, to take part in the Grand Season and soirées– very similar to Victorian England. If a woman questions a lot, levitates objects or doesn’t conform to society’s expectations, she was frowned upon. Here the society meant The Beautiful Ones, who are mostly people of the old nobility and true gentility. Simply put, it means people of reputable families. They were awful to people of lower class and birth and were very discriminative.
Hector was a commoner. He was welcomed by his friends and was wealthy, but they still saw him as an outsider.
• Characters
Nina is 19 and can levitate objects. She wants to learn anything there is to know about telekinesis, and that’s how she knows Hector from a research journal. She is a plain Jane, who is curious, sensible, naive, and hates to do whatever Valérie bids her do. She is called a witch because she possessed the power of telekinesis, and many wanted her to hide this gift. You can easily know when she is sad or angry because she’ll send books and glass flying around. She changed for the better in the second half of the book, which made me like her the most in the book.
Valérie is her cousin’s wife. She is described as the most beautiful person in comparison to Nina. She was a morally grey character. In the beginning, I could understand why she had to make her choices, but as the story went on, she took all her passive aggressiveness, bitterness, jealousy, and hatred on Hector and Nina. It was petty, and her insecurity was so evident in whatever she did later. I saw her become the villain in the novel. Her emotions were almost palpable, and she was someone who left me thinking that if her family hadn’t forced her to marry, would she have become a villain?
Though Hector and Valérie are told to be older than Nina, their age wasn’t mentioned in the book. I honestly can’t imagine why these girls were fighting over him. Hector was stolid, sad, and was a hardworking person. He promised that he will become rich and marry Valérie, but he was heartbroken when she never kept her promise to him. I didn’t like the way he used Nina to get closer to Valérie, but this was the only chance Nina got to be herself around someone who understood her gift. I liked all the small lessons when he thought card tricks and mind-control. It brought them closer, but I’d have liked nothing more than to see them perform together on stage, which didn’t happen in the book.
• Overall
The Beautiful Ones is a reminder that love is never linear. It was dramatic and was so different from Mexican Gothic. In case you’re wondering, You don’t have to worry about any creepy mansions or mushrooms. The writing was seamlessly flowing into each line. I didn’t want to break away from the book for a second. Nina’s quirkiness, her courtship with Hector, with a dash of magic made me enjoy the story more. I’ll never say no to a historical-fantasy-romance. This book had me by its claws with a character who was kind but couldn’t conform to norms pitted against a morally grey one and the plot in general. The contrast was stark and balanced well. If you love reading historical romance with a bit of magic in it, then this is your book.
A real heart as seen by the anotomist bears no resemblance to the heart the poets speak about, dainty in it’s shape.
TW // Cheating, Manipulation
About the Author
Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of several novels, including Mexican Gothic, Gods of Jade and Shadow and Untamed Shore. She has also edited a number of anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (a.k.a. Cthulhu’s Daughters). Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination.
I find it hard to rate a book than to review it. How do you go about rating books? Let me know in the comments.
“The stories we tell ourselves do matter.”
—Bob Proctor
paperbacktomes 
loved this review! i’m so excited to read this!
LikeLike
[…] ➼ The Beautiful Ones ★★★ | I’ll never get tired of reading books that just carry me into their world. This book had courtship, dramatic turn of events and a morally grey character. My review. […]
LikeLike