2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
hide

2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
hide

Book Review: The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“All we ultimately have to do is believe. We focus our mind on one single point, one single purpose, and we push. We grasp. We manipulate wood and glass and iron. However, the greatest trick is the belief. Belief is what makes it real.”

This was a surprisingly delicate story, woven out of what seemed at first to be somewhat uneven fibers. It started out strong, then wobbled a bit and almost lost me… Fortunately, I persevered, because it turned out to be quite a lovely tale of love, revenge, and hope – but without falling into the sappy or hackneyed traps that all-too-often accompany those particular descriptors. There’s a Victorian sensibility to the tale, with its formal relationships and male-female interactions. There’s an undercurrent of magic/supernatural ability. There’s a thundering love story full of passionate, violent, over-brimming emotion and the towering highs and devastating lows that so often accompany that type of overwhelming feeling. There are tremendously well-developed characters, full of flaws and talents and endearing frailty. Each of those pieces offers promise, but it is the threads that tie them all together that set the story apart…

“I am glad of who I am now. You don’t know that when you begin a journey, and looking back the picture is not always pretty, but I wouldn’t take any of it back.”

The narrative is woven together in a way that alternates between tension and ease, teasing the reader into thinking they can see where the relationships are going, then suddenly taking a subtle twist or turn that winds up throwing everything into chaos. It’s a delicate dance, marvelously managed, and it makes for a very enjoyable and engaging read!

My review copy was provided by NetGalley. The Beautiful Ones is available for pre-order now; it will release on October 24, 2017.

Leave a Reply

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>