Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Book review: Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon




Synopsis (From 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.

What I liked: 

-- The cover

-- The title 

-- The plot, and the mysterious edge to it.



What I didn't like: 



The pacing.I felt that this book was a little too slow for my liking. It wasn't the fact that there was a lot of description; I usually don't mind that, I just thought that the way that she wrote it was boring. There was no spark that made me go: 'Wow'!

Phrases such as, "How old are you?" ,"Seventeen." ,"How old are you really?" and, "I tried to stay away from you." and, "I never sleep." are really starting to piss me off. They are the types of lines that you read in almost every YA paranormal. Don't you think that authors would deliberately stay AWAY from those sorts of lines that are directly linked to Twilight


Characters. 
It also doesn't help that I dislikes about 95% of the characters, especially Renee. I wasn't sure what it was about her, but I thought that she was just irritating half the time. And Dante. Oh, Dante. I dislike you even more, if possible.

Will I read the next one?

I think I will—in the end I really did like the plot, so I think I might. Although I don’t think that I will buy it. 

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