Mini Review: Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon

Dead Beautiful

by Yvonne Woon

first book in the Dead Beautiful series

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

Over the course of my life, I've learned not to expect much from anyone, including my family and friends, and from anything, including the books that I read. This is to spare from too much disappointment. I really don't want to be let down by anything.
I've had my doubts first with Dead Beautiful so it rested for a while on the shelf. Of course, some would ask why would I buy a book that you aren't sure of. And I'd say "Read the blurb, man. I've always liked mysteries." So, I chose it for this week's TBRIC.
Oddly, I liked it. The story was not hurried and the mystery was slowly unraveled with the clues spread throughout the book - although, you can begin to guess what's happening early. Actually, it was somewhat easy to guess and it was practically solved by the time Renée reads a particular book which explained the odd things that surrounded Gottfried Academy. Here, Yvonne Woon wove a narrative that presented new elements to the myth of the undead.
The other thing I liked with this book is that although Renée and Dante had that instant connection, it did not translate immediately to instant love and I gave a relieved sigh. I was kind of turned off with the romance at first since I was thinking "Zombie! Undead!". But, I thought about it and I realized that one of them is undead, yes, but not the zombie kind of undead (which would be kind of gross). I also realized that a vampire, a kind of undead being, is prominent in YA stories - some of which I liked. Speaking of vampires, there was a scene in the book, which I call the "confrontation scene", that really reminded me of a scene in Twilight where the girl also confronted the boy about the truth of his existence. It starkly reminded me that I laughed which earned me quite a stare from my classmate. Yes, I was reading in class but hey, I already finished answering the quiz, so there.
Anyway, I'd read the sequel, Life Eternal, to find out what will happen now that everything happened. And I give this book a rating of: