Title: Dead Beautiful
Series: Dead Beautiful (Book 1)
Author: Yvonne Woon
Published: September 21, 2010
Pages: 465 pages
Format: eBook
Source: NetGalley
Purchase: Amazon
Summary (Goodreads):
On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Renée Winters was still an ordinary girl. She spent her summers at the beach, had the perfect best friend, and had just started dating the cutest guy at school. No one she’d ever known had died. But all that changes when she finds her parents dead in the Redwood Forest, in what appears to be a strange double murder.
After the funeral Renée’s wealthy grandfather sends her to Gottfried Academy, a remote and mysterious boarding school in Maine, where she finds herself studying subjects like Philosophy, Latin, and the “Crude Sciences.”
It’s there that she meets Dante Berlin, a handsome and elusive boy to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they grow closer, unexplainable things begin to happen, but Renée can’t stop herself from falling in love. It’s only when she discovers a dark tragedy in Gottfried’s past that she begins to wonder if the Academy is everything it seems.
Little does she know, Dante is the one hiding a dangerous secret, one that has him fearing for her life.
Dead Beautiful is both a compelling romance and thought-provoking read, bringing shocking new meaning to life, death, love, and the nature of the soul.
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I feel the need to bang my head against the wall. I’ve had the ARC of this book for a really long while and not ONCE did I try to open it and check if it was a good enough read. Can’t believe I was so foolish. Dead Beautiful was an AMAZING read. From the very first page I was enamored with the storyline and I knew then that I would end up loving this book like crazy.
One of the things about this book that made me click with it was the setting. Dead Beautiful takes place in a dark & mysterious school called Gottfried Academy, and not until I got to it did I realize that I LOVE books that happen around schools. It felt like going back to basics, to that time when I was actually a young adult going through the phase of Twilight and Evernight series, even more when it was apparent that it had certain similarities to those two (especially in the paranormal thing).
Despite the similarities, the author made this story stand out with some of her twists. There were no vampires or werewolves (up until now), but instead … something else. I can’t say I fully understand them yet since I feel the author barely scratched the surface about what it implies to be one of them, but I seriously cannot wait to learn more.
Dante and Renée made me squeal a lot throughout the book. Their relationship worried me a little at first since they had the same kind of interaction like some famous vampires that we know of (including being fateful lab partners), but I’m so glad that they outgrew their rocky start and from that point on everything was sweet, romantic and dangerous.
However, the BEST thing about Dead Beautiful is that the author focused everything around mythology and lore. These were my favorite subjects back in highschool so I was thrilled to read how the author put a new spin on them. She did a fantastic job in my opinion and she influenced me to pick up my books again to expand my knowledge. I love when that happens!
All in all, I’m extremely glad I finally got to read Dead Beautiful and that I ended up loving it. The ending could have been better, but I guess for the sake of a cliffhanger, it was good. Torture, even. Now I have to get my hands on the next books in the trilogy because I have to know what happens next to Dante and Renée. This series better lead to a happily ever after because I so don’t want to suffer in the end *shakes fist*.
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