After Renee Winters discovers her parents lying dead in California’s Redwood Forest in what appears to be a strange double murder, her grandfather sends her off to Gottfried Academy in Maine, a remote and mysterious high school dedicated to philosophy, “crude sciences,” and Latin: the Language of the Dead. It’s here she meets Dante, a dark and elusive student to whom she feels inexplicably drawn. As they get to know each other better, Dante can’t seem to control his attraction either, and their desires gradually deepen into a complex and dangerous romance. Dangerous because Dante is hiding a frightening secret. A secret so terrible, it has him fearing for Renee’s life.
Dante’s not the only one with secrets, though. Turns out Gottfried Academy has a few of its own… Like, how come students keep disappearing? Why are the prefect-like Monitors creeping around campus during the night? And what exactly are the Headmistress and Professors really up to? Renee is determined to find out why."
.My first and foremost thoughts on Dead Beautiful is, it's morbid. Second thoughts, predictable. By the time I had read a fourth of the book, I had the whole plot figured out. Despite it's predictability and supreme morbidness, Dead Beautiful was a capturing read. I read it all in only three hours, non stop. BUT...in this case, the bad out ways the good. My biggest problem was this. The two main characters, Dante and Renee, greatly resemble Twilights characters, Edward and Bella. Both boys are uber-strong, cold (as in skin temperature) and mysterious and both are fearful that they will, 'break' the girl. Both girls are plain in stature, (and yet both boys are head over heals in love and claim that 'she' "makes them feel alive"), both girls have almost no emotion, (I mean, it's like, 'Renee, you just lost your parents, why do you not care about them being dead and why do you only care about how they died and how wonderful Dante is?. Ugh. ) and most of all, both girls have a knack for getting in to trouble.
Second biggest problem. This is what I noticed first thing off in the book. Every single one of the Professors are close to identical to Harry Potter's professors. Ready for this? Mrs. Lynch = Argus Filch, Von Laark= Dumbledore, Prof: Betty Mumm = Horace Slughorn, and so on and so on. I am like, "Ms. Woon, why can't you create a new batch of characters, maybe some that haven't been used before...Hmmmm"
As I said above, the plot is extremely predictable, up to the last few events. The book only really really got interesting towards the end. For me this is a one time read. Read it once and if I want to read about that sort of story again, I will just read Twilight or HP.
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