Belle Morte (Bella Higgens) is a new release in the recently reviving vampiric subgenre of paranormal YA fiction. Originally published online at Wattpad to success, it was recently revised and is now being published by Wattpad’s publishing branch. Belle Morte takes place in a world where vampires are celebrities, and reside in revered Houses, such as Belle Morte, where humans can apply to enter. Successful applicants are taken into the House to be donors, who are pampered in the lap of luxury while being required to offer their blood up to any vampire who wants it. The story follows Renie, a new donor who hates vampires and has only applied to investigate her sister, who has gone missing while inside Belle Morte. Renie’s quest is complicated by the connection pulling her toward Edmond, the handsome vampire who knows more than he’s telling about Renie’s missing sister.
Author Higgins has a very casual style of writing that is very straightforward. This makes her writing very accessible and easy to let yourself fall into, but it does mean that her writing has a lot of telling. Whether the reader finds that to be a fault or a virtue is entirely up to personal preference.
Higgins does some interesting things with the way vampires fit into the fabric of this world. (In Higgins’ world, while vampires have been around for centuries if not millennia, they have only been public about their existence for the last few years.) Specifically something that stands out to me is Higgins’ reversal of a problematic pattern in vampiric fiction: the temptation to include vampires that were on the side of the South in the American Civil War. (No, I don’t know why so many major vampire books do it, but Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, and Interview with a Vampire all fall into this trap.) Higgins reverses this. While the story is set in England and the vampiric characters are primarily European, Higgins does mention vampires that were slaves in their human lives. It’s a small detail, but given the genre’s problematic tendency to do the opposite, I appreciated it.
Overall, if you don’t like the vampiric romance subgenre, Belle Morte probably won’t be to your taste. But if you enjoy these kinds of books, then Belle Morte will be a fun read for you.
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