THE BEAUTIFUL will take Renee Ahdieh fans into a 19th century New Orelans vampire tale!
Since concluding her Mulan-inspired Flame In The Mist duology, Renee Ahdieh has been working to bring a faded element of the YA genre back from the dead in gothic horror style!
It wasn’t long ago when just about every novel featured a vampire romance, often in varying degrees of detail and attention to legends. Years after that pop culture phenomenon died down, Ahdieh’s new series The Beautiful will be a dark, decadent callback to old school vampire lore set in New Orleans.
Entertainment Weekly shared the news complete with a book trailer (featured at the top of the post) plus a full description of book one:
“In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to 17-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans provides her a refuge after she’s forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent along with six other girls, Celine quickly becomes enamored with the vibrant city from the music to the food to the soirées and — especially — to the danger. She soon becomes embroiled in the city’s glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group’s leader, the enigmatic Sèbastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in the lair of La Cour des Lions, Celine battles her attraction to him and suspicions about Sèbastien’s guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.
When more bodies are discovered, each crime more gruesome than the last, Celine and New Orleans become gripped by the terror of a serial killer on the loose — one Celine is sure has set her in his sights . . . and who may even be the young man who has stolen her heart. As the murders continue to go unsolved, Celine takes matters into her own hands and soon uncovers something even more shocking: an age-old feud from the darkest creatures of the underworld reveals a truth about Celine she always suspected simmered just beneath the surface.”
EW also has a full interview with Renee Ahdieh, in which she discusses her love for the complexities post-Civil War era, how today’s politics framed the novel, and why Celine is her most personal character yet. You can read it here.
The Beautiful is due to hit bookshelves on October 8, 2019.
