ARC Review: The Beautiful Ones

The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Genre: Literary Fiction, Romance, (slightly) Fantasy
Rating: 7/10
Expected Publication Date: Oct 24th 2017

This book.

I don't even know how to explain how I feel.

At times, it was as interesting as an unbuttered piece of toast and the only reason I kept reading was that I had received this eARC in return for a review.

At other times, it held me rapt with its sumptuous lyrical prose and the dark and deep characters.

The Beautiful Ones is a historical fiction novel, set in an alternate world. It's basically France in the early 1900s only with all the names changed (whyyyy?). It is a character driven novel which follows a young woman with a strange talent as she enters her first season as a eligible woman with a good name.

The Beautiful Ones is, on some pages, a beautifully written story, but its inconsistency held this novel back from being one of my favorite reads this month. The characters were beautifully constructed and while most of them had really interesting arcs where they changed and grew, the main villain was never given this luxury. She ended the novel feeling like a stale archetype; luckily the other characters were the opposite.

The lyrical writing was captivating at times, but overused some of the impactful metaphors. The first time you read it it is fascinating...the tenth time the same metaphor is used? It loses its luster.

The magically aspect of this novel was not used to its full potential, and felt like a toss away plot line. This is probably what upset me the most. I love well-thought out interesting magic; magic was used here infrequently, and almost as a crutch to build up characters.

But even as I was rolling my eyes in boredom, I kept reading-- partly out of obligation, and partly because I couldn't see exactly where the plot was going, and that kept me interested. By the end of the novel I was hooked, and even teared up (y'all this never happens and made me reconsider my initial boredom). With all my complaints, some of the character development was really well done and that is one of the things that I look for in novels.

I would recommend this book if you are looking for a literary fiction novel set, basically, in the early 1900s. I went into this book expecting a far stronger magically element, and thus couldn't help but be a little disappointed.

How about you? Have you read The Beautiful Ones? Did you also cringe when they said 'the beautiful ones' approximately 200 times?