Book Review: Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

Dead Beautiful (Dead Beautiful #1) by Yvonne Woon
Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal Romance)
Date Published: September 21, 2010
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

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.

Dead Beautiful is the first book in the Dead Beautiful series by Yvonne Woon. This was not at all what I was expecting. I enjoyed the characters. Their friendships and relationships were pretty believable. This book presents a new take on the dead, or rather, the undead. I've seen some call them zombies, but they are not like the zombies we're used to in other fiction. Some of these folks don't even know they're dead. I found it all pretty interesting... and sad. I still have some lingering questions, but I figured with this being a series, there are bound to be questions, and they'll hopefully be answered in the next books. This was one of the more unique stories I've read in a while.

Yvonne Woon grew up in Massachusetts. She is the author of If You, Then Me, forthcoming from Katherine Tegen Books on 7/6/21, and the Dead Beautiful series (Hyperion). She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, which she mostly uses to concoct plots. She lives in Atlanta, GA.

To learn more about Yvonne Woon and her books, visit her website. You can also find her on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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