A New Age For Vampires In Young Adult Literature

In the late 1990s and early 2000s authors such as Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer began a tidal wave of Vampires to the YA genre. Over time though, and especially with the fetishizing of vampires towards teens, a true sense for the supernatural has fizzled out. Now, in 2019, Renee Ahdieh is bringing Vampires back to YA in a more abstract form.

Vampires in Young Adult literature have never been an interest to me. They are something I always link to steamy romance. However when I saw that Renee Ahdieh (author of The Wrath And The Dawn, and Flame In The Mist) had a novel coming out in October based around a shadowy world of Vampires in New Orleans, I was immediately intrigued. Ahdieh is an author I trust to write, and to write strong female characters (which I don’t find common in Vampire novels). So I decided to try the book. The Beautiful has broken the mold of Vampires in YA in more ways than one.

What is a vampire?

A blood sucking demon. An alluring and seemingly forever young, usually male, person. And he has probably caught the attention of an even younger, unaware, innocent, beautiful girl. By the end of the story though, that girl’s innocence is somehow sacrificed in order for the two to be together. The vampire pays no debts in order to get the girl, and ultimately either drain her or spirit or blood.

Does that sound like a story we all recognize?

Celine, the main character of The Beautiful, breaks this mold of distressed damsels in supernatural Vampire novels. She’s young, that’s true, but Celine is hardly innocent. Already on the run from the wrecked life she left behind in Paris, Celine knows that the world can be dangerous, especially for a woman.

In an attempt not to spoil anything, I will cut to the chase and say that by the end of The Beautiful Celine has sacrificed nothing near what a character in her situation would have lost about twenty years ago. She escapes with her life, her youth, her beauty. All the while with the same wariness and sensibility as the character began with.

Bookstagram post photos of an Advanced Readers Copy of "The Beautiful". Pictures taken by me, Charlotte VS (@_books.and.beyond_)

Bookstagram post photos of an Advanced Readers Copy of "The Beautiful". Pictures taken by me, Charlotte VS (@_books.and.beyond_)

Another element to the novel which I would like to highlight as something that sets The Beautiful apart from its precedents, is its definition of Vampires. It doesn’t give a strict definition. Rather, Ahdieh seems to show Vampires as characters with parts of themselves shadowed in dark pasts. People who reach desperately for a grip on both strings of their lives— the human and the supernatural. The Beautiful’s Vampires don’t act out of bloodlust or desire, they have control of themselves from a still human half.

With these key factors Renee Ahdieh is starting a new wave of Vampires in YA novels. A wave which includes modern ideologies and can hopefully remove the negative connotations attached when someone says “It’s a vampire novel”.