First of all, I really loved the cover. It is very beautiful and drew me to give it a chance. Vampire fiction is a hard category because of how much it has been done and how oversold it is in mainstream media, but you never know. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed with The Beautiful. It felt very slow, like if the pacing and characters were a bit more on the ball, it might have come together more for me.
I did find the characters interesting and I like that we go all the way back, almost like it wants to mimic Interview with a Vampire beginnings. However, our main character lacks her follow through arc. She had a lot of potential to be a very independent, strong female lead but the plot line had her weakening as the story went on instead of coming into her own. She's very intelligent, but makes decisions and does things she knows are dump somewhat on purpose. Then she needs to be rescued again and again. There was also some flatness between our love interests in that the connection between them had the potential for greatness but we went from really nothing straight into 'madly in love' and there was no build. I think that was harmful to them both and their relationship.
The author is really good at the descriptive and I really felt for the New Orleans area and all the great dresses/pants our characters wore. However, there needed to be some pull back on that for the story. Because the story is kind of slow, the overly descriptive aspects started to ware on me and become repetitive. This was a bit distracting and pushed me farther out of the book as it continued.
I really wanted to like it, but it did end up falling a little flat for me. Sometimes that happens in the 'setup' book (the first in the series). I did make it all the way through because a small part of me wanted to know how it ended but I don't feel drawn to pick up the next one so much. It just wasn't quite for me. As a side note, if you are wanting a vampire book, this one (at least the first in the series) is not really a 'vampire book'. It has some but it's a small piece.
I did find the characters interesting and I like that we go all the way back, almost like it wants to mimic Interview with a Vampire beginnings. However, our main character lacks her follow through arc. She had a lot of potential to be a very independent, strong female lead but the plot line had her weakening as the story went on instead of coming into her own. She's very intelligent, but makes decisions and does things she knows are dump somewhat on purpose. Then she needs to be rescued again and again. There was also some flatness between our love interests in that the connection between them had the potential for greatness but we went from really nothing straight into 'madly in love' and there was no build. I think that was harmful to them both and their relationship.
The author is really good at the descriptive and I really felt for the New Orleans area and all the great dresses/pants our characters wore. However, there needed to be some pull back on that for the story. Because the story is kind of slow, the overly descriptive aspects started to ware on me and become repetitive. This was a bit distracting and pushed me farther out of the book as it continued.
I really wanted to like it, but it did end up falling a little flat for me. Sometimes that happens in the 'setup' book (the first in the series). I did make it all the way through because a small part of me wanted to know how it ended but I don't feel drawn to pick up the next one so much. It just wasn't quite for me. As a side note, if you are wanting a vampire book, this one (at least the first in the series) is not really a 'vampire book'. It has some but it's a small piece.