The Belles by Dhonielle ClaytonBook Review

Hello lovely people it's James, and today I am here to do a review of The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton. This is the first book in her new YA fantasy trilogy, and disclaimer I was given this book for free as an e-book copy through Netgalley But that does not affect my opinions on this book as you will probably be able to tell after the end of this review because it's not exactly a positive review But I will start with the good things because there was some really interesting stuff about this book And that's what made it end up that much more just disappointing for me in the end but the overall concept of this is really interesting: the fact that there's this world that the majority of people are like gray and lifeless and Pretty much live without beauty and then you have these people, the Belles, whose purpose is to change them and make them beautiful and the comments on I guess gender roles and What a woman is supposed to look like and the underlying feminism around that is wonderful and very well-executed So I definitely enjoyed that. And the whole world-building is Phenomenal, the way that... - This is kind of tied into her writing style as well because the writing style is absolutely beautiful, vivid Extremely well written, especially for YA, not to put down other YA, But a lot of the very popular young adult series are not written well at all (I'm looking at you Sarah J.

Maas Oh, my god.) Anyway. It's really written well. Even the dialogue is great, which most YA - heck, most fantasy - has terrible dialogue so to see all of this written very well, it was a very refreshing, I guess I could say. But Basically, I really was enjoying this very much until about the 60% mark - I read it on Kindle obviously I think I already said that.

And then everything just kind of started to fall apart the sort of slow build of a plot that was happening Ramps up speed, which is fine, you're nearing the end of a novel It's kind of how novels work usually But it basically just becomes a carbon copy of pretty much every first book in a fantasy series ever I won't even restrict it to YA because there's a lot of adult fantasy that does it to it and drives me insane I'm also not here for the kill your gays trope. Basically the one like prominent gay character is used as cannon fodder to show how bad the villain is and that just Made me so angry I'm still fuming just because this is 2018 and we still have people I guess looking over gay people as a person that really matters and all we are is cannon fodder for your fucking characters that just made me very angry So I'm going to rant about it. Okay. And also the characters just become Painfully stereotypical by the end.

That kind of feeds into the sort of stereotypical plot as well And I guess I'll kind of outline that. I'll put a little spoiler message here If you're interested in reading it because I wouldn't say don't go out and read this if you're interested in it But it just didn't work well for me, but anyway So spoilers; you can skip ahead until when this like thing is gone basically. The plot turns into: You have this protagonist with magic powers that's somehow better than the other people that have magic powers as well, and that's not really explained and then they go through their plot or whatever and basically the book ends with the tyrannical regime coming into play and Everything's all bad and terrible And she thinks she's about to get killed because the hot guy that she thought she could trust she couldn't trust but it's fine because the other hot guy that she thought she couldn't trust she could trust and they escaped and then the novel ends by bringing back a character you thought was dead or something and the very last words in the Novel are just her name. It's so infuriating how this book basically Started off so well And had this such an interesting premise and then turned into lazy plot writing by the end and I just - I didn't like this at all like I said before I wouldn't say don't go read it if it's something you're interested in; the underlying tones of feminism and Everything is done, so well But I would have to give a major content warning to the kill your gays trope possible fatphobia because the only two like fat characters mentioned specifically as being fat one of them is the Person that's basically gay cannon fodder, and the other one is a predator.

Also content warning for attempted rape towards the main character. So uh yeah I. Wouldn't recommend this really if you're looking for a good YA novel But I wouldn't not recommend it if you're fine going into it with the caveats I just listed, but yeah, this was - this was a major disappointment. Definitely my least favorite book of the year so far But I've only read like five so that's not that much of an achievement, but yeah So I guess that was my really ranty review of The Belles.

If you read this let me know your thoughts on it! I guess I should say it comes out on the February the 6th at least in the States, I got the advanced readers copy, but regardless I. Wasn't into it. If you read it, I hope you enjoy it hope you find more in in it than I did, but if you've read it already Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and yeah. So that is my ranty review of The Belles! If you liked the video Please click the like button and subscribe if you want to see more.

Thanks for watching, and I will talk to you again soon!.