The Belles

Belles is the first book in the series and it does a great job setting up foe the series. The fantasy world of Orleans was described beautifully, but those who live there are cursed. See, the God of Sky fell in love with the Goddess of beauty and felt slighted when he believed she loved her people more than him. He curse them, stripping away all color and beauty.

The Belles were created to restore beauty to the people of Orleans, but only for the ones who could afford the procedures. The price of being able to change your hair and skin color and tone, your body features doesn’t come at a small price. The procedures are sometimes ling and painful, but to beautiful is the envy of both women and men. But even with all this outer beauty, there is still an ugliness that sometimes can’t be changed. And Camille, our main Belle we follow, learns that the hard way.

Being picked as the Queen’s “Favorite” is everything to the Belles. It was they’ve trained and strived for. Now as the story starts we are introduced to several Belles, but the main one the story follows is Camille. She is a rule pusher, but she excels at her magic with amazing results. She’s also a perfectionist, and a worrier. I have to admit, I went back and forth liking her and wanting to shake some sense into her. She could be quite frustrating at times, but I did believe she had her heart in the right place for the most part.

The concept behind this was very intriguing which is what drew me to read this. It did however take a little to get into, which was okay with me, it is a fantasy world that needed some world building. It was a little slow for me at times. But with the different social classes and they work it was great to learn about them. There are even teacup elephants, monkeys and dragons. *I want a teacup monkey!* And, of course there is always the power hungry ones who stand out. One particular, well, she was just evil to the core. Lots of little plot twist throughout but there were some things that happened during the story that I didn’t understand the “why’s” behind them. Maybe it was just me, but I will say there is an attempted sexual assault, which was unsettling and it wasn’t handle all that well with in the palace either…

There were big secrets uncovered that led up to a suspenseful cliffhanger ending. Even with some of the questions I was left with at the end, Camille had really redeemed herself for me and grown so much, I am curious to see how she and her friends make out in their perilous situation.

Even though I did have a couple of issues while reading, I did still enjoy the world and concept behind it all and I would recommend this more to the upper young adult readers. Belles was a good start to the series and look forward to continuing it.

If this story has been written by someone who was a better author it could easily have been 5 stars, possibly as popular as the Hunger Games series.

Instead, Clayton spends 80% of the book describing the scenery in flowery prose which drags on needlessly. This book could’ve been shorten by a 1/3 or even 1/2 and nothing of consequence would be missed.

I forced myself to finish it because I already paid for the book not realizing the sample plot (24 hours of getting ready&being nervous) would be dragged on for 200 pages.

The main character doesn’t act as a reasonable human (wether flawed or not), but merely as a prop to further the story along. That is acceptable for side characters, not for a first-person point of view novel.

There’s also a major plot hole where the Queen does NOTHING to help the character when dealing with the violin because she’s “sick”, but she’s able to get up and walk when it’s something she wants. She could’ve made an announcement from bed. SHE’S A QUEEN. Too unrealistic. No strong ruler would let someone they know is evil, violent & unstable sabotage their plans while doing nothing.

Mrs. Clayton if you see this: Fire your editor. This has potential but it was squandered by poor editing. Lessen the physical world building (not including character descriptions, those are nice) and increase the world building surrounding belle history, the lives of the Gris, etc.

Verbose novels are ok IF there is a benefit to the words.

Personal preference: eventually the whole “he’s flirting and I love it but I’m going to act like I hate it” thing gets old and it’s a cliched and overused trope.

If she was creative enough to come up with this book concept, I have no doubt miss Clayton could’ve done better.

I literally listened to half on audiobook and decided I HAD to read it can’t wait for the sequel