The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh | book review

✧ This review is spoiler-free! ✧

“When life becomes difficult. the only source of strength we have is love. Love of others, love of self, love of life in its entirety.”

Renee Ahdieh, The Beautiful

Title: The Beautiful
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Series: The Beautiful, #1
Published: Oct. 8, 2019
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Reader
Category: young adult
Genre: fantasy, paranormal, romance
Pages: 448
My Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.5)
Goodreads page

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Synopsis

In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and—especially—to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as Le Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s leader, the enigmatic Sèbastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of Le Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sèbastien’s guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.

When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose—one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.

[ This synopsis was taken directly from Goodreads. ]

Top 10 Books I Read in 2017

2017 is coming to an end… and thank goodness for that. It’s been a rough year, to say the least, but that didn’t stop me from reading some pretty freaking awesome books. I didn’t read as much as I wanted to this year, but that just means I’m going to try extra hard in 2018 to get to all the books I want to read.

Too many books, not enough time, am I right?

Anticipated Releases: 2018

It’s 2018, and a new year means a whole new load of books to be excited for!

I’ve decided to compile a list of my most anticipated releases of 2018 because I normally don’t do monthly anticipated releases.

(All the synopses in this point are taken directly from Goodreads.)

(There are some spoilers as some of these books are part of a series. I put spoiler warnings before their synopses and provided a drop down so the summaries are hidden unless you click on the drop down.)

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh | Book Review

Title: Flame in the Mist
Series: Flame in the Mist, #1
Author: Renee Ahdieh
Published: 05/16/17
Genre: fantasy, retelling, romance, young adult
Pages: 416
My Rating: 4.5 / 5
Goodreads page

This review is free of the pesky thing also known as spoilers.

Spring 2017 Anticipated Releases

Spring is already here. Winter seemed a bit too short for me. I don’t know about you guys, but living in the southern states of the US means that our winters are short and are summers are really long. Heck, spring weather started coming in the middle of last month.

I don’t have a lot of anticipated releases this spring so I decided to just compile them all into one post.

All the synopses are from Goodreads.

The Moth and the Flame

Title: The Moth and the Flame
Series: The Wrath and the Dawn, #0.25
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Published: January 3, 2012
Edition: ebook
Pages: 374
Goodreads page

ATTENTION: This is a non-spoiler, short review for a short novella.

The Crown and the Arrow

Why would such a girl have cause to hate Khalid with such fire?
The fire of a rising sun.
Even before he whirled away from the dais, Khalid knew he had to discover why.
Though it might cost him what little remained of his sanity.

Title: The Crown and the Arrow
Series: The Wrath and the Dawn, #0.5
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Published: March 1, 2016
Edition: ebook
Pages: 9
Goodreads page

This is the wedding of Shahrzad and Khalid in Khalid’s point of view.

ATTENTION: There aren’t any spoilers in this super short review for this super short novella.

April Anticipated Release

The reason this post is named “anticipated release” instead of “anticipated releases” is because I only have one book that I’m anticipating this month. There are a lot of books that are being released this month, but either I haven’t read the books in its series before it or they haven’t peaked my interest.

But there is one that’s being released this month that I’m so excited for. After how the first book ended, I NEED THE NEXT ONE RIGHT NOW!

Title: The Rose and the Dagger
Series: The Wrath and the Dawn, #2
Author: Renée Ahdieh
Release Date: April 26
Goodreads page

If you haven’t started reading this series, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Get on it! I was sort of skeptical when I first started the series because of all the hype surrounding it. Several months later, the hype was still going on, and I knew I had to go check it out myself. Turns out, the hype didn’t lie this time because this series is so far FANTASTIC. I’m pretty sure a lot of young adult readers out in the world would agree with me.

March Wrap-Up

This month has been pretty uneventful. I was super tired the whole time (which isn’t the first time), and didn’t blog as much as I should have. At least I read more than I usually do.

However, like every month, I hope that I’ll do better in April. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Who knows?

Musing Mondays #3 (Mar. 14)

This meme is hosted by MizB @ Books and a Beat.

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

-I’m currently reading…
-Up next I think I’ll read…
-I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
–I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
-I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
-I can’t wait to get a copy of…
–I wish I could read ___, but…
-I blogged about ____ this past week…

I was on Twitter this morning and saw that Renée Ahdieh just tweeted this out:

YESSSSSS!!!!!

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THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Approximately how many books do you usually read per week? Per month?

Back when I had a decent reading schedule, I read on average one book a week. That meant that I read four books a month, give or take one or two. Nowadays, because my schedule is so random, I range from reading zero to five books a month.