Every Exquisite Thing: A Guest Post by Laura Steven

Chilling and thrilling, this horror reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fresh and haunting look at a classic story about beauty and identity. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Laura Steven on writing Every Exquisite Thing.

A YA horror-thriller-romance retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Infinite Fates, with a never-before-seen bonus chapter! Featuring beautiful sprayed edges while supplies last.

When I first read The Picture of Dorian Gray as an English Lit student in high school, I was impressed not by the erudite explorations of aestheticism and amorality, but rather by the image of a tormented portrait subject destroying his own painting and inadvertently killing himself. My first thought was not, “wow, what poignant allegory” but rather “cool murder weapon.”

In the years since, during which I somehow became an author of novels inspired by female rage, I knew there was something in the seed of that scene I wanted to explore further. What kind of person would willingly have such a dangerous portrait painted, and why? The answer seemed obvious—a young woman obsessed with preserving her beauty and body size—and everything grew organically from there.

My aim was not to deliver a strict retelling, but rather a reimagining of the classic. A new plot, a new cast of characters, a new dark academia setting. These all came to me so vividly I can only describe it as a haunting: the cutthroat drama school and the arcane gallery housed beneath it; the eccentric found family and the soft sapphic romance; a stranger’s blade hovering over an immortal portrait and picking off victims one by one. A famous mentor who never seems to age. A messy mother-daughter relationship. A truly unhinged acting exercise in which students take turns to become master or servant (inspired by a real class taught at LAMDA).

I also had immense amounts of fun adding ingredients from other media that felt in keeping with the theme and tone of the novel. I rewatched Black Swan multiple times, and tapped into the Shakespearean vein of M.L. Rio’s sensational If We Were Villains. I immersed myself in Dungeons & Dragons, because the nerdy cardigan-obsessed love interest played it. I interviewed students and teachers of elite drama schools to find out what it’s really like to live and work there. 

But still, the why was the aspect I agonised over most—why would Penny sell her soul for beauty?—because it really required me to dig deep into my own demons. 

Why does seeing an unflattering photo of myself send me into such a tailspin? Why does the failure to fit a certain beauty standard make me feel so ashamed? What would it take to free me from those shackles? 

These are all questions posed in the original text, so it was just a case of exploring them with a fresh set of eyes—and deeply personal experience. 

Writing this novel healed something in me, because now, as I write this, I can honestly say I don’t relate to the version of me who wrote it four years ago. Like Penny, I no longer care about being beautiful in the eyes of the world. I care about being the truest version of myself. And if I can make that switch in even one young reader, then it will all have been worth it.