Review: The Belles - Dhonielle Clayton

I am Belle. I control Beauty.

In the opulent world of Orleans, the people are born grey and damned, and only a Belle's powers can make them beautiful.

Camellia Beauregard wants to be the favourite Belle - the one chosen by the queen to tend the royal family.

But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favourite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that her powers may be far greater - and far darker - than she ever imagined.

When the queen asks Camellia to break the rules she lives by to save the ailing princess, she faces an impossible decision: protect herself and the way of the Belles, or risk her own life, and change the world forever.

The Belles Series:
The Belles
Future titles and release dates to be confirmed

Visit Dhonielle Clayton's website for more information

Review:
It's taken me a long time to write my review of The Belles, I kept putting it off because I have no idea how to rate it and I'm still struggling to decide whether I liked it or not. There are a lot of wonderful things about this book and I can see the way Dhonielle Clayton was trying to make us look at our own culture and the value we place on physical beauty being the most important part of a woman. The way she highlighted the ridiculous lengths we sometimes go to to fit in with society and to live up to expectations.

At first I loved the incredibly descriptive writing style but in the end I found it bogged down the story and made the first half of the book an incredibly slow read. We get page after page after page of descriptions of the latest beauty trends and how these looks are achieved by visits to the magical Belles who are able to physically transform everything from people's skin, hair and eye colours, to the size of their waists and even their heights. The work is excruciatingly painful and gradually your body will revert back to it's original shape and colour so to remain "beautiful" you'll have to constantly put yourself through more of this torture to top up your beauty and to follow the latest trends.

This is a long book but nothing much really happens until you're halfway in because so much time is spent on describing everything about the world in such great detail, from the food to the buildings to the clothes and of course the beauty treatments. To me it felt like you could have cut a lot of that and given a much more interesting and faster paced story. It was interesting enough to keep me reading and the pace certainly picked up in the second half but it was so easy to put the book down and walk away that it took me over a week to finish reading it and I read multiple other stories in between.

I don't think it helped that I guessed nearly all of the main twists well in advance of them actually happening. There are plenty of betrayals but none of them were surprises because they came from characters I never trusted in the first place. I also thought that the main bad character was like a cardboard cutout villain, there was literally nothing nice about them so you were never surprised by the awful lengths they would go to. If you have a villain who is more complex and you feel there is a chance of them redeeming themselves then it's always harder to see the evil things they do but that just didn't happen here. Evil person was evil. No questions, no doubts, they were just 100% nasty and capable of any despicable act you could think of.

The last few chapters were where the story was most interesting for me and that ending does have me curious to see how the story continues in the next book but I'm honestly not sure if I'll bother reading it or not. Overall while I can see why there is so much hype around The Belles ultimately this book just wasn't the best fit for me. I still think it's well worth checking out though because so many other reviewers loved it far more than I did.

Source: Received from Gollancz in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
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Blog Tour: The Belles - Dhonielle Clayton

Today I'm excited to be taking part in the blog tour to celebrate the release of Dhonielle Clayton's highly anticipated novel The Belles. This is a story full of magic set in a world obsessed with beauty but underneath the gorgeous exteriors most people aren't quite what they originally seem and things are much darker than you expect.

Welcome to the dark decadence of Dhonielle Clayton's sharp tale of beauty, obsession and magic. . .

I AM A BELLE. I CONTROL BEAUTY.

In the opulent world of Orléans, the people are born grey and damned, and only a Belle's powers can make them beautiful.

Camellia Beauregard wants to be the favourite Belle - the one chosen by the queen to tend to the royal family.

But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favourite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that her powers may be far greater - and far darker - than she ever imagined.

When the queen asks Camellia to break the rules she lives by to save the ailing princess, she faces an impossible decision: protect herself and the way of the Belles, or risk her own life, and change the world forever.

Chapter 1 of The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

(Posted with permission of Gollancz)

The God of the Sky fell in love with the Goddess of Beauty after the world began. Sky showered Beauty with gifts of his loveliest objects-the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars. She accepted his offer to be his wife, and together they had the children of Orléans. But Beauty loved her new children so much, she spent all her time with them. After she refused to return home, Sky sent rain and lightning and wind to drown the first humans. When Beauty protected the people from harm, Sky cursed them with skin the color of a sunless sky, eyes the shade of blood, hair the texture of rotten straw, and a deep sadness that quickly turned to madness. In return, Beauty sent the Belles to be roses growing out of the dark and ravaged soil, destined to bring beauty back to the damned world, as the sun brings light.

from The History of Orléans

We all turned sixteen today, and for any normal girl that would mean raspberry and lemon macarons and tiny pastel blimps and pink champagne and card games. Maybe even a teacup elephant.

But not for us. Today is our debut. There are only six of us this year.

My fingertips leave fog teardrops on the paper-thin glass walls. The carriage is beautiful and clear and fashioned into a ball. I am a delicate doll poised inside a snow globe. An adoring audience surrounds my carriage, eager to see what I look like, and what I can do.

A net made of my signature pink flowers stretches along the glass curves in order to tell everyone my name-Camellia-and to hide me until I'm revealed to the royal court.

I am the last in line.

My heart races with excited nervousness as we snake through the crowds in the Royal Square for the Beauté Carnaval. The festival happens once every three years. I peer through the tiny spaces
between the petals with a pair of eyescopes, and try to soak in my first glances of the world, wanting to fold up each bit and tuck it into the cerise layers of my dress.

It's a wonderland of palace buildings with golden turrets and glittering arches, fountains full of crimson and ivory fish, topiary mazes of clipped trees, shrubs, and bushes in every possible geometric shape. Imperial canals circle the square, holding jeweled boats bright as gemstones and shaped like smiling moons on midnight-blue water. They spill over with passengers eager to watch us. The royal hourglass that measures the length of day and night churns with sand the color of white diamonds.

The sky and its clouds are made of melting cherries and flaming oranges and burnt grapefruit as the sun sinks into the sea. The dying sunlight flashes my own reflection on the glass. My powdered skin makes me look like an overly frosted piece of caramel cake.

I've never seen anything like it before. This is the first time I've visited the imperial island, the first time I've ever left home.

The Orléans archipelago is a string of islands stretching like a rose with a crooked stem out into the warm sea. Most of them are connected by golden bridges or can be reached by lavish river coaches. We came from the very top-the bloom-and we've made a long journey to the heart of the stem to display our talents.

A breeze pushes its way through tiny breathing holes in the glass carriage, carrying with it the scent of the sky. Salty rain, spiced clouds, and a hint of sweetness from the stars. It all feels like a dream that's held on and lingered past the dawn. I never want it to end. I never want to return home. One minute here is richer than a thousand moments there.

The end of the warm months brings change, Maman always said. And my life is bound to transform tonight.

The horses tug us forward, their hooves clip-clopping against the cobblestoned square. Vendors are selling sweets in our honor: small mountains of shaved ice topped with strawberries the color of our lips; intricate little teacakes shaped like our signature flowers; sweet puffs molded like our Belle-buns; colorful strings of sugar pinwheeled around sticks to mirror our traditional waist-sashes and dresses.

A hand thumps my carriage and I catch a sliver of a face. The square is overflowing with bodies. There are so many of them. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. Imperial guards push the crowd back to give our procession space to pass. All the people seem beautiful, with skin in various colors, from fresh
cream to a drizzle of honey to a square of chocolate; their hair is in blond waves or brunette curls or raven coils; body shapes are petite, round, or somewhere in between. They've all paid to look this way.

The men wear jackets and top hats and cravats in a prism of colors. Some have hair growing on their faces in neat patterns. They stand beside women adorned with jewels and draped in luxurious, pastel-colored dresses made full with crinoline and tulle. Intricate hats cover the ladies' hair; some clutch dainty parasols and oilpaper umbrellas, or cool themselves with patterned fans. From the blimps above, I bet they resemble candies in a box.

I recognize the more popular looks from the stacks of gossip tattlers left in the mail chest a day too long, or from the weekly beauty-scopes Du Barry's daughter, Elisabeth, sometimes dropped between the velvet cushions of the parlor-room couch. The Orléans Press says strawberry blond hair and jade eyes are the new windy-season trend. All the newspaper headlines read:

AWAKEN LOVE . . . LOOK IRRESISTIBLE WITH

STRAWBERRY AND JADE

FILL YOUR TOILETTE BOX WITH BELLE-APPROVED

RHUBARB HAIR POWDER

A COMPLEXION OF LILIES AND BELLE-ROSE LIPS-

THIS SEASON'S COLORS OF BEAUTY

The newsies say that's what everyone will want in the coming months.

Coins jingle. Hands wave velvet pouches in the air. The spintria inside creates a tinkling melody. How much does each pouch hold? How many treatments can they afford to purchase? How much are they willing to pay?

I adjust the eyescope lens, zooming in on excited onlookers, noticing how some of their skin tones have faded, like paintings that have faced the sun too long; how their hair is graying at the roots, and age-lines are creasing several brows.

It's a reminder of why I'm here.

I am a Belle.

I control beauty.

About the author:

Dhonielle Clayton is the co-author of the Tiny Pretty Things series. She grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs on the Maryland side and spent most of her time under her grandmother’s table with a stack of books. A former teacher and middle school librarian, Dhonielle is co-founder of CAKE Literary—a creative development company whipping up decidedly diverse books for a wide array of readers—and COO of the non-profit, We Need Diverse Books. She's got a serious travel bug and loves spending time outside of the USA, but makes her home in New York City, where she can most likely be found hunting for the best slice of pizza.

Visit Dhonielle Clayton's website for more information

Don't forget to check out the rest of the stops on the blog tour!