Reviewing THE BELLES by Dhonielle Clayton...and looking at the differences between the US, UK, & French Covers

O P E N I N G   H O O K:

  WE ALL TURNED sixteen today, and for any normal girl that would mean raspberry and lemon macarons and tiny pastel blimps and pink champagne and card games. Maybe even a teacup elephant.
But not for us. Today is our debut. There are only six of us this year.
  My fingertips leave fog teardrops on the paper-thin glass walls. The carriage is beautiful and clear and fashioned into a ball. I am a delicate doll poised inside a snow globe. An adoring audience surrounds my carriage, eager to see what I look like, and what I can do.
  A net made of my signature pink flowers stretches along the glass curves in order to tell everyone my name--Camellia--and to hide me until I'm revealed to the royal court. 
  I am the last in line.

(Page 1, UK e-ARC edition)

"I identify all the smaller pigments--the rich browns and tans and whites--that help make the hue bright and uniform. Maman used to make me tell her all the pigments that made up the deep red of an apple, or the brown of a peanut. It was her nightly test for me while I was studying skin transformations. While the other mothers forced my sisters to trace their cursive letters, I worked on shades and spectrums. The core of beauty is color, Maman used to remind me when I complained about her exercises.."
~Camellia, THE BELLES

I'm really excited to be on tour with Dhonielle Clayton's UK publisher Gollancz / Orion Publishing Group to celebrate this week's launch of THE BELLES, one of 2018's most-anticipated debuts. The book comes out this Tuesday, February 6th, in the US (via Freeform / Disney-Hyperion) and Thursday, February 8th in the UK. To celebrate, I thought I'd show you the slight differences between the US and UK covers...and throw in the really cool French cover as a bonus! (The French version launches February 22nd from Robert Laffont.)

Can you see all the subtle differences? From the tagline (Which uses a darker shade of pink in the UK edition) the fact that you see a little more of the image in the UK edition to the slightest difference in hue. And then the French edition? We see most of that gorgeous dress and the background is striking and white. The red of the title just pops! I really can't decide which cover I like the most; both backgrounds are a lot of fun. I do like the UK edition a little better than the US edition because the tag is more visible/readable (Though that may not be true once I see the US finished copy this week!) and I like the vibrancy of the hue the best. I also really love the French cover and all the white and red! I can't decide; I love them both!

THE BELLES is one of the most original novels I've read in quite a while. It unveils the ugly side of society and holds a mirror up to today's society and biases in the process. The Belles are "the descendants of the Goddess of Beauty, blessed with the arcana to enhance the world and rescue the people of Orléans."  They can alter the way a person looks, from skin tone to hair color to height and weight, to the shape of one's nose or lips or even the amount of freckles they have. The people of Orléans hate the way they look and always strive to be more beautiful. There is a curse on them and they revert to the way they were born once a month. We learn about this curse before the book even begins:

   The God of the Sky fell in love with the Goddess of Beauty after the world began. Sky showered Beauty with gifts of his loveliest objects--the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars. She accepted his offer to be his wife, and together they had the children of Orléans. But Beauty loved her new children so much, she spent all her time with them. After she refused to return home, Sky sent rain and lightning and wind to drown the first humans. When Beauty protected the people from harm, Sky cursed them with skin the color of a sunless sky, eyes the shade of blood, hair the texture of rotten straw, and a deep sadness that quickly turned to madness. In return, Beauty sent the Belles to be roses growing out of the dark and ravaged soil, destined to bring beauty back to the damned world, as the sun brings light.

(pg. vii, UK e-ARC edition)

The people of Orléans revert back frequently, and must visit the Belles at the various imperial teahouses in which they are employed to maintain their looks. The Belles can even alter a person's demeanor to make them kinder. Likewise, if they choose, they can make a person "ugly" just as easily as they can "beautiful." Camellia and her sisters have been prepping for their turn to help Orléans their entire life. They each covet the role of Favorite, the Belle who transforms the royal family. Camellia thinks her time serving as a Belle will be perfect, but she has no clue what darkness is lying in wait for her and her sisters...

First, let's talk about the society! The citizens of Orléans remind me of the citizens of District One in THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins with how wild and elaborate their looks can be, and how extravagantly they spend their money on such things. Everyone is shining and sparkling and unique. But the price to look this way is so much higher than money. There is a lot of pain involved and the process is not a delicate one. Plus, you are trusting yourself fully to another human. What if they don't transform you as you wish? And what does it cost the Belles to use so much of their gift to constantly transform so many people? As the book progresses, Clayton digs deeper and explores what it means to be beautiful and the emphasis society places on it.

One of my favorite things about THE BELLES is the way Clayton describes everything. Her words are wrapped in cotton and sweetness and are so visual. Maybe it's in part due to the pastel hues of the cover, but I see so much of that color in her words as well. Just look at the opening hook I posted earlier, he way Camellia talks in terms of food and color. Then the way Clayton uses visual sentences such as "My fingertips leave fog teardrops on the paper-thin glass walls." These descriptions and sentences are peppered throughout the novel and are gorgeous to read and visualize. I really adored her writing style!

At first, I wasn't sure what direction the novel would take. Was this going to be dystopian? I hadn't been expecting that and wasn't in the reading mood for that. So that expectation tainted the beginning of my read in that sense just because I wasn't in the right frame of mind. But I continued to love the world and be intrigued by what was going on, and I'm so glad the book opened into a direction more reminiscent of THE SIN EATER'S DAUGHTER by Melinda Salisbury or THE RED QUEEN by Victoria Aveyard or AN EMBER IN THE ASHES by Sabaa Tahir, where so much of the world lies on the back of royalty in a way that can be deadly or dangerous for the main character. I loved that it went this direction and opened up THE BELLES in new directions. I'm already eager to read the sequel and see where Clayton takes us next! (I'm also highly intrigued by the fact that the US Imprint is Freeform, leading me to wonder if it is similar to Alloy and will lead us to a future TV series!)

THE BELLES definitely lives up to its hype and is one to pick up as soon as it arrives in bookstores this week!

~*~

C O N T E N T R A T I N G S

Content Ratings: highlight between ( ) for details

Romance: PG ( kissing )

Language: --

Violence: PG13 ( Camellia must defend herself against a male patron who wants to have his way with her; she must also do as the princess says and make a girl deformed for sport. When citizens of Orléans receive treatments, they sometimes moan and groan in pain.)

Other: --

~*~

C O V E R   D E S I G N:

I already showed you them earlier and talked about how much I love them all!

  ~*~

O F F I C I A L   I N F O:

Title: THE BELLES

Author: Dhonielle Clayton

Release Date: February 6, 2018 (US)
February 8, 2018 (UK)
Publisher: Freeform / Disney-Hyperion (US)
Gollancz / Orion Publishing (UK)
Received: For Review

SUMMARY:

I am a Belle. I control Beauty. 

In the opulent world of Orléans, the people are born grey and damned, and only a Belle's powers can make them beautiful. 

Camellia Beauregard wants to be the favourite Belle - the one chosen by the queen to tend to the royal family. 

But once Camellia and her Belle sisters arrive at court, it becomes clear that being the favourite is not everything she always dreamed it would be. Behind the gilded palace walls live dark secrets, and Camellia soon learns that her powers may be far greater - and far darker - than she ever imagined. 

When the queen asks Camellia to break the rules she lives by to save the ailing princess, she faces an impossible decision: protect herself and the way of the Belles, or risk her own life, and change the world forever.