Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Beautiful Ones was originally published in 2017 and is the second to last of her novels that I need to read before I am all caught up on her bibliography. Unfortunately, The Beautiful Ones fell short of my expectations.

The Beautiful Ones is about a telekinetic named Hector Auvray who has made his fortune travelling around the world as an entertainer. He has come to Loisail to find the woman he was engaged to ten years before, Valérie Beaulieu, one of Loisail’s “Beautiful Ones”, a wealthy socialite who ended her engagement to Hector after her family talked her into marrying another man. Instead, Hector meets Nina Beaulieu, the cousin of Valérie’s husband, who is eager to make Hector’s acquaintance. Nina is making her debut at the Grand Season with her family’s intention of finding her a husband, but Nina is also telekinetic and apparently telekinesis is not cute on a woman. Despite coming from a wealthy family, Nina is looked down upon and called a witch. Hector is the first person she meets who understands her ability and helps her hone it, and Nina falls madly in love with him.

But Hector is using Nina for access to Valérie, who he has not given up on loving. Meanwhile, Valérie does not like the idea of Hector being with Nina and strings him along. Then Nina catches Hector and Valérie kissing, and her dreams of being with Hector fall apart. But this does not stop Valérie, a bitter and spiteful woman trapped in a marriage to a man that she loathes, from continuing to manipulate both Hector and Nina so that they can never reconcile, and she encourages a vapid young man named Luc to pursue Nina for her fortune.

Valérie is a cartoon villain dressed up in Moreno-Garcia’s beautiful prose. Her behaviour becomes increasingly outlandish and unhinged as her plans for Hector and Nina fall apart. It was just too cringe for me to be entertained by. But my biggest problem with The Beautiful Ones is how Nina’s story gets reduced to a love triangle with two mediocre men. It was giving vibes of the Belly-Conrad-Jeremiah triangle from The Summer I Turned Pretty, which I absolutely hated because Conrad and Jeremiah both sucked.

Nina deserved better than having to choose between two men who were using her for different reasons. I don’t care if Hector eventually learned that Valérie was a waste of time and fell in love with Nina. Nina should have been someone’s first choice, and she should have ended up with someone who could immediately appreciate her vivaciousness and her refusal to conform to societal norms.

I felt like I was on a roll here with Moreno-Garcia’s novels, so I am really disappointed that The Beautiful Ones turned out to be an uninspiring love story.