AUTHOR: Renee Ahdieh
SERIES: The Beautiful #4
GENRE: Fantasy, Paranormal
AGE: Young Adult
BLURB:
The Sylvan Vale and the Sylvan Wyld are at war. Now that the unsteady truce between them has been broken, lines must be drawn. In an effort to protect the weakened Winter Court, Bastien rallies powerful allies and friends in New Orleans to come to their aid.
Meanwhile, under protection alongside her injured mother in the Summer Court, Celine is uncertain of whom to trust. She cannot get word to Bastien, and does not understand why he has not returned. When she realizes war between the fey courts is imminent, she journeys with Ali in an effort to find the time traveling mirror and change their fate.
But when Celine’s rivals realize Bastien has rallied his allies in the mortal world, they decide to take the fight to him.
#PenguinTeenPartner
Thank you to Penguin Teen for sending me a copy to review!
I really liked the first two books in this series, but The Beautiful still remains my favorite. I definitely enjoyed Pippa’s book, and I was hoping to enjoy this one.
It was certainly…something. I’m not quite sure how to phrase it. It was definitely a different take than I would have thought. In the beginning there is a bit about Anne Rice, and this book definitely read to me in that way, more Anne Rice like.
I know these are Renee’s characters, but I didn’t particularly like any of them in this book. Honestly, I LOVED Celine and Bastian in the previous books, but in this one I couldn’t stand them. This used the miscommunication trope x10 – and not in a good way. As you all know, that is one of my least favorite tropes.
I absolutely could see where she was going with this book, and while I personally don’t agree with those choices (to say the least, I don’t agree at all) I can’t say that they don’t make sense in context, because they do. It wasn’t what I expected at all from the final book in the series, so I suppose that left me very surprised.
Her writing is superb as always, and she always manages to create such lush environments for her characters to thrive in, and one of my favorites Pippa, just wasn’t in this as much as I would have liked.
Suffice to say, I have very mixed feelings on this book, like, it was a solid book, the overarching plot was good, the writing was good, the pace was decent, and there was nothing maliciously bad about it, but it also just wasn’t giving me the same feeling as the first two, even the first three books gave me.
I liked that we got an end to the series, and it does feel complete, whether or not I liked it.