Publisher: Freeform
Series: The Belles #2
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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In this sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller, Camille, her sister Edel, and her guard and new love Remy must race against time to find Princess Charlotte. Sophia's Imperial forces will stop at nothing to keep the rebels from returning Charlotte to the castle and her rightful place as queen. With the help of an underground resistance movement called The Iron Ladies-a society that rejects beauty treatments entirely-and the backing of alternative newspaper The Spider's Web, Camille uses her powers, her connections and her cunning to outwit her greatest nemesis, Sophia, and restore peace to Orleans.
As much as I wanted to love this, I believe that The Belles was world's better than The Everlasting Rose.
There was so much more descriptions about the lush world, and there was so much more intrigue in book one. In this sequel, it was much more running around trying to evade capture and rescue the other Belles than anything actual plot wise happening. The most exciting part of the book didn't really happen until almost the end.
I did appreciate the deeper origin story of the Belles, and how they came to be. We get more details on where the came from and how they came to be twisted to fit the beauty obsessed world of Orleans.
One element that should have been used more was the entire underground rebellion that the tagline is all about. "The Revolution is here" made me think that there would be way more rebellion than there actually was. The Iron Ladies weren't really utilized like they should have been. There's a "big" action scene at the end where they aren't even present and then BAM! All of the sudden they burst into the room right when Camille is doing her thing. It was disappointing considering the resistance was such a focal point of the tagline and synopsis, and they were barely around.
Character wise, Camille was not who she was in book one. Everything that happened to her really hardened her but it also made her make some rash decisions. Her sister Edel was trying to warn her about their other sister Amber, but Camille was so focused on rescuing everyone that she just brushed the warnings aside to do what she wanted.
I did enjoy Clayton's use of beauty and how the Belles were essentially slaves to beauty since they were the only ones who could make people beautiful. Sophia wanted to manufacture Belles to be sold to the highest bidders to keep in their own homes which also alluded to the slavery theme.
Overall, I wasn't as transfixed with this book as I was with The Belles. It was still good, but it was missing a lot of the things that made book one so amazing.
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