Reviews

Holy crap!! This book was phenomenal. The characters are amazing and the plot just keeps winding darker and darker and you get more and more entrenched in the world. The prose is rich and exciting, the antagonist twisted beyond belief. This whole book was insane. It honestly should raise so many questions about what beauty is and how we view ourselves. I cannot wait to rea the second one.

snoopydoo77's review against another edition

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5.0

I really, really enjoyed this book. While it started off a bit slow for me it sure picked up ¼ through the book and from there on it is pretty fast paced.

I absolutely love the world Dhonielle Clayton created, it was magic and real. I really wouldn’t mind to see it on the screen someday. Everything was well described but not overdone.

If you think this book is all about beauty and vanity, you are wrong there is so much more that is taking place. I don’t want to give anything away and it really dosent if I say to be a faviorte is not a necessarily good thing as Camille things in the beginning. She learns quickly that being a favorite may just mean a bigger and better golden cage. There are a lot of secrets and lies to be uncovered and Camille being a bit of rule breaker and rebel means to find out what all it hidden behind the nice golden and royal façade.

This book is full of surprises and has some nice plot twists that I did not see coming. Also be warned it does end with a cliffhanger.

I really enjoyed Camille for the most part of the book, she did have some annoying parts but she learned quickly and I ended up really liking her. Another favorite for me was Remy and I wish we could have had more of him.

Overall, this was a fast paced, full with some action, betrayal and many twists and turns read that I really enjoyed.

I rate it 4 ½ ★ because it was a bit slow in the beginning for me but otherwise a great read with an awesome world.

tinky47's review against another edition

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5.0

Great for fans of Red Queen and Smoke and Bone- Camille is a Belle. She and her sisters are raised to be use their talents to make the people of Orleans beautiful, since they would all look like red-eyed corpses without magical aid. This novel is about beauty and magic on the surface, but tells a deeper story of greed, distortion of body images, and abuse of power. Ordering the second book immediately!

daumari's review against another edition

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4.0

Ooh. I'm glad I read this, but the downside to jumping on the first part of a series is not knowing if or when dangling thread resolutions will happen...

The Belles is the debut novel of [a:Dhonielle Clayton|7359319|Dhonielle Clayton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1517526815p2/7359319.jpg] (solo, anyway- according to GR she's cowritten two books about ballerinas), and I'd characterize it as gaslamp fantasy though it definitely takes cues and aesthetics from Marie Antoinette's court (both historical and the Sofia Coppola film). Camellia Beauregard and her sisters are Belles, women with the magical gift to shape physical and personal traits. Such talents are viewed as a necessity, for all humans in Orléans have grayish skin, red eyes, and strawlike hair without the temporary gift of Beauty.

Camille is definitely a teenager* with all those intense feelings both petty and fierce. This makes it hard to root for her sometimes, but her heart's grounded in a good place. The worldbuilding is probably my favorite, and while I'm normally :/ at using food descriptors for people, EVERYTHING is described like food in Orléans and a screen adaptation** of this would be sumptuous, in a Hunger Games' Panem-but-slightly-tasteful way.

Since I saw Black Panther recently, I've been thinking about the value of complex villains, and the villain here sometimes feels cartoonishly venomous (though certainly rooted in mean girl culture). She's sympathetic in a way, as a victim trapped in a culture that favors beauty above all else, but again, the way she maneuvers to where she is at the end feels very sudden and mustache twirling.

However, as I said at the beginning, my interest is piqued, and I need to know what happens next!

Trigger warnings: there's a scene with an attempted sexual assault. As mentioned earlier, the villain can be very cruel (over the pettiest things too), and while I don't think it's intentional given the author is a bisexual lady, some gays are buried. I do wonder if that ought to have been picked up on by a beta reader, but given that we're only one book in, I'm leery of harshly judging the series on that point.

Would recommend if: you like YA, non-medieval/renaissance fantasy is your jam, court intrigue intrigues you, and/or if you want to support diverse books
Avoid if: see TWs, and/or if first person YA annoys you, teenage girls annoy you

*

Spoiler

(but is she really? The accelerated growth noted by Valerie makes me think that Belles are a short-lived like annual plants and need to be replanted every year.

On that note, would Arabella, Camilla, and Belladonna be a clonal lineage?

** Given this is published through Freeform Books aka Disney, I wouldn't be surprised if either a television or movie adaptation were to happen.

quasinaut's review

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I struggled with liking any the characters (particularly Camellia) and understanding anyone's motivations. Everything felt too disjointed for me - which may in part be due to listening to the audiobook - but the slow pacing in the first half and flowery descriptions just didn't work for me.

Content Warnings

msrcreation's review against another edition

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3.0

This book kept teetering on loving it and being bored by it. I would have a few chapters fully invested and loving it and then a few chapters where I wasn't into as much. Also had issues with how the plot was playing out or how the characters were acting. I will say I was not expecting how brutal this world was going to be. There was some violent moments that definitely made me twinge because of how uncomfortable it could be. It's dark and the villain of the story is absolutely horrible. You will easily hate this character. To be honestly almost everyone in this world is horrible including the main character at times. Though that fits with how dark the world is. I loved the idea behind this story and I enjoyed some of the characters but it unfortunately did drag and wasn't what I was hoping.

sarahp85's review against another edition

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3.0

This was an easy entertaining read but nothing more than that. I didn't connect with anyone in the book but it was enjoyable to read!

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