Dead Beautiful

CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!!!!

I have recently finished reading the book Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon. It’s about how a girl named Renee Winters, a Californian, clumsy girl, who finds her parents in a nearby forest, dead. It seems to confuse Renee because she finds it nearly impossible for both of them having to die at the same time, with coins surrounding them, and cloths shoved in their mouths, especially since they’re supposed to be at work, which is about an hour away from where their bodies are. After the funeral, Renee’s grandfather-who Renee is certain of that her parents hated-comes into Renee’s life, he lets her mourn for a few days, then tells her that she’s gonna go attend Gottfried Academy, an ‘elite boarding school’ in Maine. He sends her there because he feels like she will be safer there since like Renee, he believes that her parents’ death is no accident.  Renee is reluctant to go, but ends up going, she soon finds out what the school has very dangerous secrets. 

There’s one secret that the school refuses to talk about, and tries really hard to not let the students there find out. But Renee is determined to find out, even if it means she can get killed like the other students who have died there. Students like Cassandra Millet and Benjamin Gallow have been in on the secret, now they’re dead, even Renee’s best friend Eleanor, ends up dying-but she wasn’t on the secret, her brother way though…every year the school has a test, to see who is ‘smart and bright’ enough to be able to be on The Board Of Monitors, a very fancy way to describe the ‘hall monitors’ basically. But there’s also one catch with being on that, they’re in on the secret too.  Renee tries to get the secret by getting Eleanor to ask her brother since basically, he would tell her anything, but it doesn’t seem to be enough, all Eleanor can get out that makes Renee really suspicious is that, the students who’ve died, Ben and Cassandra and Eleanor, have died the exact way Renee’s parents have-with coins and cloths. 

Renee ends up reading about Gottfried’s past, all that she can find which is an utter shock to her, is that, there were others students who have died, and they’ve died the same way, cloths and coins, in the beginning of the story, when Renee found her parents, and she questioned the police about it, they had told her that the reason they had died, was because they both had heart attacks. Renee clearly did not believe it, how could both of her parents have heart attacks at the same time? They may have been close but they weren’t that close that they could have planned their own deaths at the same time. Now, since it says the other students have died there the same way, Renee believes they’re hiding something big, how could all those young kids have a heart attack when they were perfectly healthy?

 

But to uncover that secret, Renee needs to uncover the secret of her boyfriend’s identify, Dante Berlin. When Dante-star student, high grades, and everything-first meets Renee, Eleanor is there, describing ‘the guy who sits next to her during the Fall Assembly’ to be Dante. She says that Dante never talks to anyone, and in the Assembly, to Eleanor’s shock, Dante talks to Renee. Soon, Renee finds herself attracted to Dante, but not in the-oh he’s so cute kinda way, more like, there’s something very familiar about him…I can’t put my finger on it though…kinda way. They end up hanging out, Renee also feels more alive near him, as Dante feels to her-though he probably won’t admit it. Through classes like Latin, they become closer and closer. (I know, it doesn’t seem important-oh she gets a romantic relationship with the mysterious guy of the school, yeah big deal, so what? Well it is so hold up, please?) When Renee reads about the Gottfried past she finds out a few things…things that sorta match up Dante’s mysterious personality. Cold Skin all the time, afraid of underground, won’t kiss anyone. (Dante does this, yes, to make it clear.) As Renee reads she finds the words: Basium Mortis which is basically Latin for having your soul taken from you, or kiss of death. ‘I turned the page. The pictures were disturbing. They showed children sucking the souls out of other children. Their faces looked hungry and bestial, driven by animal cravings. Though strangely, I thought, it looked like they were kissing. The realization struck me, and I sat up and gasped. Kissing. Dante refused to kiss me on the lips. This must be why. A kiss could kill me.’ Soon, Renee connects it…and she finds out Dante is one of the undead children, one of the children from the age of 21 and below who have died and their soul has left their body, now the body wands the Earth looking for their soul, and in order for him to live without his soul, Renee finds out, that he has to suck out the souls of other people or he’ll die. (Wow, must be a bummer o.o having to find out your boyfriend could kill you anytime he wanted, and that he’s dead…) But that’s not all…Renee also uncovers that she holds Dante’s lost soul, and he could one kiss, Renee could die, Dante could live again till he dies again for good.

Finding that out, Renee learns that the other students, Ben, Eleanor, her parents, they’ve all died by Basium Mortis, the kiss of death, by the undead children who want to live. She has uncovered the secret of Gottfried...but at what cost? Finding that out, one of the BOM (Board of Monitors) people-Gideon-wants to kill her, for some reason he has hated her since the beginning of the school. He tries to,  but Dante gets in the way, he ends up killing Dante but Renee saves him, giving him the kiss of life (yes, bad pun…I know). Renee lives though; Dante kisses her back and gives her back her, his…their soul, him becoming the undead again, and Gideon getting away.

Through this long story plot, Renee learns a few things, for one that, sometimes you have to look in your past to understand that future. When they were alive, Renee’s parents used to make her tell them back old theories that they told her. She had to look back at that to figure out all the connections between Dante, the BOM, the deaths of children, the death of her parents, and the death of her friend. Looking back Renee accepted that her boyfriend was the undead that people in her school where the undead and the BOM were just people that made sure the undead stayed in line. (Yes, the undead have requirements, read the book, it’ll explain more.) Looking back…Renee learned to understand everything that has happened.