YMMV / The Belles

• Catharsis Factor:
  • There's a lot in The Everlasting Rose
    • Even though it turns out he switched sides, Camellia starts torturing Auguste for lying to her and selling out Belle secrets to Sophia, putting her sisters in danger just so he could marry the new queen. The Iron Ladies have to stop her by vouching for him being part of the resistance. Even after he apologizes to her, he also admits that she has every right to be angry at him for all that he did and has no obligation to be forgiving.
    • In the climax, Camellia nearly kills Sophia slowly and painfully, as well as everyone in the court that has either sucked up or refused to resist her. Charlotte does talk Camellia down but Sophia learns the hard way why you don't go for Bullying a Dragon.
  • Sophia finally gets what she deserves when she's within inches of fulfilling her lifelong dream to be Queen, after having tortured and killed countless innocent people along the way; a drawn out and painful death that brutally disfigures her before she finally drifts away into nothingness.
  • After willingly killing and maiming her fellow contestants in the Beauty Trials and aiding the very cruel Sophia into returning to the throne, only to betray her at the last moment, Blais isn't even granted a spectacular death; she's quietly snuffed out in exchange for Quentin giving up his and his family's immortality.
• Designated Hero:
  • Camellia in The Everlasting Rose starts using her powers to slow down and even stop peoples hearts and she tortures Auguste without any remorse. While she's mostly justified considering he broke her heart and endangered her sisters to gain the queen's favor, Camellia doesn't really seem horrified about what she can do either. While Camellia only ends up killing Sophia's teacup elephant to avoid being detected by the overly friendly creature, she's not exactly upset about it either.
  • Edel thinks of herself as this in The Beauty Trials when she accidentally kills a fellow contestant and then a guard as she wasn't fully aware of the power of Quentin's knife at the time. However, Edel does strive to help her fellow contestants rather than hurt them, and only takes the lives of those who have shown they're willing to kill others for their own selfish desires.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Edel is praised by reviewers for being a rebellious Belle who isn't afraid to speak her own mind about how they're expected to use their gifts and who doesn't blindly accept whatever she's told. In addition to striking out on her own after escaping from the teahouse, she's also the only one to realise that Amber was never really on their side and that they aren't to be trusted.
  • Quentin for being a rare example of a genuinely good-hearted male character, who has excellent chemistry with Edel and a mysterious backstory that's never truly explored.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Camellia displays her talent as a Belle by using her magic to make a little girl look like a miniature version of herself. Turns out Camellia herself is the exact double of a former Belle called Araebella and that there are baby Belles who also look exactly like her.
• Jerkass Woobie: Amber. She might have sold out Camellia and her sisters to Sophia, but she had also experienced first-hand how cruel and terrifying Sophia could be and was clearly incredibly frightened of her. Poor Amber pays for it too, given that Sophia slits her throat and allows her to bleed out in front of a horrified Camellia.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sophia crosses this when she forces Camellia and Edel into a competition to see who can create a new look for Claudine until they end up killing her as her body can't handle such dramatic changes in such a short amount of time. Sophia then sees to it that they're solely to blame for her death.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The overarching plot in The Belles doesn't kick in until over halfway through the novel while in The Everlasting Rose the vast majority of the novel is Camellia and her allies planning to take down Sophia with the actual confrontation at the end very rushed.
• Strangled by the Red String: Camellia and Remy's relationship comes across like this as there's very little build-up, not to mention the romantic undertones in many scenes are just awkward given the circumstances. The Beauty Trials does show eventually them as a content and established couple.
• Tough Act to Follow: Camellia's beloved Maman was chosen as favourite, which makes her all the more desperate to follow in her footsteps.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Auguste. Despite learning more about the Belles from Camellia and leaking their secrets to Sophia he genuinely had no idea she was planning to grow her own Belles and is horrified when he learns about her true intentions. He then works hard with the Iron Ladies to atone for his actions and it's heavily implied his mother was the one who forced him to win favour with Sophia in the first place.
  • Amber, a hard-working Belle who studies and follows every single rule she's given, can never quite measure up to Camellia who was naturally more gifted than her. Her dream of becoming Favourite is ripped away from her because Princess Sophia wanted Camellia instead, and so forced Amber to perform awful transformations on people so she would be sent away, she's framed for murder, and then she's killed by the very woman she betrayed her sisters for.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Hana, Padma, and Valeria don’t get nearly as much characterization in comparison with Camellia, Ambrosia, and Edelweiss.
  • Quentin is a rare portrayal of a genuinely kind male character, with a mysterious lineage due to being immortal from a pact forged between his family and the Goddess of Death. His bond with his vulture Encerclant and his struggles with doing what's expected of him versus what is right makes for an incredibly compelling character. Yet he ends up sacrificing himself by undoing the pact when it turns out his parents were in on Sophia's plot to return to the throne, which goes against the pact formed in the first place, and quietly dies by Edel's side. However, he does state that Edel can come and visit him in the Grottos, hinting that his spirit will at least remain, leaving a chance for him to return in the future.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • While the Belles show some interest in discovering more about their divine origins, there's still not a lot known about where they come from and the extent of how different they are from the Gris; such as will they continue to age more quickly just like their mothers did or can they bear children of their own. The ending of The Beauty Trials does vaguely hint that Camellia was able to have a baby with Remy.
  • With Edel falling in love with both Gaelle and Quentin, there was a very real opportunity to introduce a polygynous relationship, a complete rarity in current fiction and likely very fitting with New Orleans and it's open view on relationships. However Quentin dies and Edel remains with Gaelle as of the epilogue.
• The Woobie: Camellia and the rest of the Belles were bought up in pampered isolation being praised for their gifts to grant beauty to people, but the cruel reality is that they were forced into that life with very little say about what they actually wanted to do, and are then sent off to separate teahouses where they're worked to the point of exhaustion. Sophia then ends up imprisoning them and tries to bleed them dry in order to create her own Belles, a process that actually kills a couple of them.