Every Exquisite Thing by Laura Steven

Title: Every Exquisite Thing

Author: Laura Steven

Genre: Thriller/YA

Publisher: Farshore Books/Electric Monkey/Harper Collins Australia

Published: 4^th October 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 352

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: A feminist YA horror-thriller-romance retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray by the TikTok sensation and author of The Society for Soulless Girls…
Penny Paxton is the daughter of an icon. Her supermodel mother has legions of adoring fans around the world, and Penny is ready to begin her journey to international adoration, starting with joining the elite Dorian Drama School.

When Penny’s new mentor offers her an opportunity she cannot refuse, to have a portrait painted by a mysterious artist who can grant immortal beauty to all his subjects, Penny happily follows in the footsteps of Dorian’s most glittering alumni, knowing that stardom is sure to soon be hers.

But when her trusted mentor is found murdered, Penny realises she’s made a terrible mistake – a sinister someone is using the uncanny portraits to kill off the subjects one by one. As more perfectly beautiful students start to fall, Penny knows her time is running out . . .

A seductive and searing exploration of beauty, identity, and what the pursuit of perfection can truly cost.

~*~

Content warnings: disordered eating, parental addiction, emotional abuse, animal death, body horror, disfigurement, violence, suicide threats, death.

Penny Paxton is the daughter of supermodel icon, Peggy Paxton, adored the world over with stunning beauty that never seems to change. When Penny sets foot into the elite Dorian Drama School, the same school her mother attended, she’s set to begin her own path, but on her own terms. She doesn’t want anything because of who her mother is – she wants to make things work on her own. Penny already has an enemy in Davina Burns when Penny takes over as Lady MacBeth and is going to be mentored by the legendary Orlagh Camran.

Orlagh offers her the chance to have an exquisite, mysterious, and immortal portrait painted by the Masked Painter – a chance to never age. Immortal beauty captured forever, just like Dorian’s alumni. Yet soon after, Orlagh is murdered, and Penny is determined to find the Masked Painter and uncover the secrets of Dorian and the building named after someone called Basil Hallward before more uncanny portraits are destroyed, taking the lives of those they represent with them.

Every Exquisite Thing is a dark, uncanny and feminist retelling of the Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, another book where the protagonist and those around him are obsessed with youth and immortal beauty. Laura Steven has taken this classic tale and turned it into a young adult novel, making it a horror thriller with a feminist twist. Each of the main characters – Penny, Peggy, Orlagh, Maisie, Davina, and Catalina are women, who all have different desires and goals. And many are obsessed with the idea of beauty and the perfect body, which is a big part of the acting school world the story is set in. Penny, who as alopecia, seeks a way to get beyond this. It’s a darker story than the Oscar Wilde one and goes to some very dark places that some readers may find distressing.

Laura has set her story in Edinburgh, an historical town that fits the story well, and grapples with familial trauma throughout – living up to what society thinks you should be because of a famous relative, being seen as your name and not as anything else – being known as ‘that person’s child,’ and feelings of isolation and what this can do to someone like Penny. She spends much of this gothic novel trying to escape the fate of the portraits and find a way to become who she was again, before she entered a sinister deal. To do so, Penny must go to dark places, and uncover family secrets. Even as she grapples with the truth about her father – or at least, what her mother tells her, Penny is determined to make sure nobody else is killed – and allows her Dorian friends to help her.

The novel deals with disordered eating, parental addiction, emotional abuse, animal death, body horror, disfigurement, violence, suicide threats, and death throughout the novel, making it creepy and sinister but also reflecting realities about our world. What lengths people go to so they can have control over something in their lives when they can’t control other things – in Penny’s case, she can control what she eats whilst she is losing her hair due to alopecia and seeking her mother’s love and approval. She can control who she surrounds herself with to some extent, but not how they feel about her. The portrait is a way – so it seems – of getting some control, but really, I felt like the portraits controlled those the subjects of the paintings. It’s inevitable though – that a world you are trying to control will unravel eventually. Once Penny starts to take back control, she becomes who she wants to be.

Every Exquisite Thing explores how society views women too. Beauty is a currency – an important one – one that Peggy, Penny, and Davina have been taught is their most important attribute. The messages they’ve been sent by mentors and society is that beauty is important, their beauty is more important than skill or talent, and it is an idea that is both abused and used in this book to peel back the layers of society and reveal the falsity of this notion. Through Penny, the world of outer beauty and perfection is explored. I enjoyed seeing Penny and her friends be themselves and come to terms with identity and beauty, and effectively working to reveal the pressures that society and the media puts on people to be perfect so they can fit in and achieve. My favourite character was Catalina – who wanted more than fame. She had goals to be on the stage, but she also had other dreams of academia and just being herself. She was also someone who was accepting of other people, who Iistened and stood by her friend, Penny, and helped her through things. Each character was their own being, a diverse range of women, gay and straight, with layers of complexity like any human. In allowing the characters to have goals and flaws, and secrets, Laura Steven created a diverse cast of characters who fitted into the world of drama and Edinburgh exceptionally well. Everything about this novel wove around the original concept from Oscar Wilde well. I have read many retellings and this one worked well and can be enjoyed whether you have read the Oscar Wilde novel or not, but I think will have a better meaning if you have. An intriguing and spooky novel that I hope people enjoy.