Review! Beautiful Dead by Eden Maguire

Beautiful Dead

(Jonas, book 1)

Eden Maguire

Sourcebooks Fire 

March 1, 2010

ISBN-10: 1402239440

ISBN-13: 978-1402239441

Not alive. Not dead. Somewhere in between lie the Beautiful Dead.

Something strange is happening at Ellerton High. Phoenix is the fourth teenager to die within a year. His street-fight stabbing follows the deaths of Jonas, Summer, and Arizona in equally strange and sudden circumstances. Rumors of ghosts and strange happenings rip through the small community as it comes to terms with shock and loss.

Darina, Phoenix's grief-stricken girlfriend, is on the verge. She can't escape her intense heartache or the impossible apparitions of those that are meant to be dead. And all the while the sound of beating wings echos inside her head...

And then one day Phoenix appears to Darina. He tells her that she must help Jonas-the first of the four to die-right the wrong linked to his death. Only with her help can Jonas finally rest in peace. Will love conquer death? And if it does, can Darina set it free?

In Beautiful Dead, there are four teenagers who in within a year have died, the latest one being Phoenix and his girlfriend, Dorina, is overwhelmed with grief over this. She somehow gets the feeling that she needs to go to this abandoned farm in the middle of nowhere and sort of catches the Beautiful Dead red-handed in bringing Phoenix back. Apparently, this band of people are neither human or ghosts but in-between zombies! Before they can move on they need to resolved whatever issues they left when they died so they can move on - to what, we're not sure - and their boss, if you will, is this ghost named Hunter who has been dead for decades.

The fact that they literally call themselves the beautiful dead sort of made me laugh. Yeah, they're practically ghosts but their self-esteem is still damn intact! However, I actually did like the story, Dorina now has to somehow help Jonas resolved whatever it is that's keeping him here so he can move on in his ghostly path. The one thing that really annoyed me was how Dorina interacted with her mom, and it's not the same old bit about the parents not giving a crap about their kids but that her mom really tried yet Dorina just pretty much ridiculed her and due to this, at times I just wanted to smack Dorina. 

Beautiful Dead is a quick read and a very unique story, the characters made things interesting and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what happens in the future books.


Lush Rating: 3!