Dead Beautiful

August 23, 2010
For a girl who has just lost her parents, her home, and her friends, 16-year-old Renée Winters is an unusually analytical and composed narrator in this supernatural tale from first-time author Woon. A lifelong denizen of California public schools, Renée adjusts with effortless aplomb when her grandfather sends her to the private Gottfried Academy in northernmost Maine, where she joins the most exclusive clique and starts dating the most handsome boy on campus. Renée does have one quirk she keeps secret, though—her knack for finding dead things, from the corpses of her parents ("The redwood forest covers more than three hundred square miles," Renée's grandfather tells her, "yet you were able to find them within half an hour") to a desiccated mouse under a library table. She's also noticed that her boyfriend Dante's skin is unusually cold, and why are so many of the senior students fluent in that dead language, Latin? It's a Harry Potter start and a Twilight finish for this competent but somewhat predictable tale, which is told in a style that is more efficient than evocative. Ages 12–up.