The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
I would like to thank Ella from Jo Fletcher Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Jo Fletcher Books
Published - Out Now
Price – £16.99 hardback £6.99 Kindle eBook
They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail's most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina's chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun and already Nina's debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis: the haphazard manifestations of her powers have long made her the subject of gossip - malicious neighbours even call her the Witch of Oldhouse.
But Nina's life is about to change, for there is a new arrival in town: Hector Auvray, the renowned entertainer, who has used his own telekinetic talent to perform for admiring audiences around the world. Nina is dazzled by Hector, for he sees her not as a witch, but ripe with magical potential. Under his tutelage, Nina's talent blossoms - as does her love for the great man.
But great romances are for fairy-tales, and Hector is hiding a secret bitter truth from Nina - and himself - that threatens their courtship.
Love can take it’s time to arrive. We may be distracted by a lost romance; we may not understand what love is or we may be also mistaking love for a duty we must perform. It’s confusing and can make us both our best and worst selves. In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s magnificent The Beautiful Ones we are shown a love triangle that pulls its characters in all these directions and reminds us sometimes magic is still real.
Hector Auvray is a renowned travelling entertainer now performing for high society and demonstrating his scientifically ratified powers of telekinesis to dazzle audiences. He arrives at the time of the Season when The Beautiful Ones (the nobility) parade their young generation to find a suitable marriage. He accidentally crosses paths with Nina de Villiers and a courtship begins. Hector also discovers that Nina shares his telekinetic ability, and he teaches her some ways to control this skill rather than just be on the receiving end of it when emotions run high. But Hector ten years ago was an impoverished young man just eking out a living and Nina’s aunt Valerie was romantically involved with Hector; even engaged when she broke it off to marry Nina’a Uncle. Hector thinks this may be a way to get back in touch with Valerie, Valerie thinks Hector seeks revenge and Nina thinks she has found true love. Each character will face the ithers and ask themselves what is it they really want.
This is a brilliantly constructed tale of romance but also loss. Moreno-Garcia splits the tale into two parts and gives us characters going through personal cards that will by the end really change themselves and the reader’s views of them. The character work here is dazzling. Hector appears at the start almost a villain using Nina to pursue a lost love affair of his own. Nina is the innocent pawn I the game that her scheming Aunt uses to punish Hector for his impudence in coming back. WE are initially sympathetic to Valerie for realising that she was indeed in love with Hector but his low status compared to the other Beautiful Ones she is part of meant she could never truly follow her heart. He first part of the novel is this swirl of games; hidden conversations and revealing of secrets that comes to a very dramatic confrontation one stormy night.
But it’s the second part of the tale which really lifts the tale, and some authors may have stopped there too as a great way to have a tragic romance tale. After this climax the characters are revisited one year later, and the events have changed them and make us see each differently. Hector is humbled and we see a man slightly more broken by unrequited love he never realised he could move on and that Nina was a woman with far more in common with him than he realised. Nina though herself has realised that love is not always like the novels she reads with frail heroines and she wants to experience life for herself including her own desires and a nice young man appears who could offer that opportunity. Now Valerie is the schemer, and we see she has no desire for anyone to find love happily and she plans Nina to have the same transactional marriage she herself was forced into. I loved the way organically we both understand the characters. Why they act this way and also that each character gets to now choose their own behaviour and suffer the consequences- now no one is purely a stereotype and that makes the story flow beautifully.
In terms of the world that Moreno-Garcia has created this sits in a belle epoch style turning of the centuries where the old ways and the new are starting to mix and clash. Society balls and dances are still prized but the young start to revel in ideas that a woman and man cannot go anywhere alone without causing scandals. This becomes an intriguing step in Nina and Hector’s future relationship where they start to recognise that they are equals in many ways and although family scandals could arise, they start to realise their own love may need to take important and of all the characters Nina becomes the one I most liked for taking the world on herself to find her own path in it. Add to that though is the slow burn of the telekinetic ability these two have. Its starts as a small parlour trick, becomes a dazzling piece of theatre entertainment but it also as the relationship grows becomes how the two leads bond and has a key role to play in the dramatic finale when lives go on the line for love. I really enjoyed how subtly the role this plays I the tale was laid out and yet still felt quite natural for the tale at the end.
The Beautiful One is an intelligent and character driven romance tale with characters you may finding you both hate and then sympathise with as we understand them more. Love isn’t always about doing the sanest thing, but it is about learning to grow up and respect your partner and In found this a hugely impressive piece of storytelling. Highly recommended.
