You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Beauty and her sisters have a wonderful, deep love for each other but still, like any siblings, have their differences, disagreements, and teasing moments. Their relationship to each other is as important to Beauty as her relationship to the Beast, which is absolutely wonderful to see. The Beast is himself is a wonderful compliment to Beauty.
If I have to mention something I wish was different about this book, is that I wish it was longer and we saw more of Beauty and the Beast. But as it is, it's a wonderful and short tale filled with kindness and love.
I love Robin McKinley's fairy tale retellings, especially her Beauty and the Beast ones. This one is very different than her first one and I enjoy the contrasts between the two. The focus on growing roses and how they need love to grow and if there's not enough love great amounts of magic are needed instead. The thought that the roses and the very heart of the Beast and in this story they are dying.
The ending isn't quite the sort of classic Disney fairy tale ending we've come to expect, but it is a happy one and I enjoy it.
This book was captivating in its beginning, with the story clipping along at a good place. The characters are well fleshed-out, establishing bases from which they will grow throughout the story. The characterization/development and world-building are the best parts about this book. The portions during which Beauty is with the Beast drag on frightfully long - though, it could be argued, this is reflective of the enchanted nature of the palace. Especially towards the end, I found myself skipping over large swaths of text to get to the point. There was a lot of unnecessary exposition - it kind of felt like the author decided to dump her notes about various characters' backstory in here because they didn't fit in anywhere else. Additionally, there was an attempt at developing a mystery to help engage the reader that, had it been executed better, would have added much to the story. As it was, it seemed to be tacked on to the end, rather than strategically placed so as to add to the events within the story.
There was also one thing I didn't quite understand. (Spoilers ahead).
If one day in the enchanted castle was as long as one month in the real world, why did this suddenly flip opposite at the end, when it acted as though one day in the real world was much, much longer than one day in the enchanted castle? By rights Beauty would have had several months to get back to the Beast, rather than a matter of mere minutes, if this had stayed consistent. The difference could have been explained, but I did nowhere find an explanation for the discrepancy. I found this quite irritating - I'm a big fan of continuity.
All in all, I enjoyed this book. Despite it being wanting in places, I enjoyed reading it - especially towards the beginning. There is some graphic violence, but no graphic sex or language. I would recommend this book for middle school readers and up. Three stars.
This book is interesting because it's written by the same woman, [a:Robin McKinley|5339|Robin McKinley|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1314406026p2/5339.jpg], who wrote [b:Beauty|41424|Beauty (Folktales #1)|Robin McKinley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1294192311s/41424.jpg|2321285] (the first retelling of this story that I red a few weeks back) twenty years prior. In the afterword, McKinley explains that Beauty & the Beast has always been hear favorite fairy tale, & she wrote [b:Beauty|41424|Beauty (Folktales #1)|Robin McKinley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1294192311s/41424.jpg|2321285] "almost by accident," as more of a writing exercise that she never expected to be able to sell to anyone precisely because it was so straightforward & followed the traditional tale so closely. Feeling strongly that authors shouldn't recycle plots, she said for years she'd never write another "Beauty & The Beast," but it turns out that between 26 and 46 a lot of life happens, and with 20 years of additional maturity & experience under her belt, McKinley realized that maybe she hadn't said everything she had to say about this particular story.
There are definitely similarities between the two. Many of the traditional elements of the fairy tale are intact--wealthy, widowed merchant of three daughters faces financial ruin & moves the family to the country, is unexpectedly called back to deal with a lingering business matter, gets lost in a winter storm while riding back, & is put up & fed overnight at a seemingly empty yet enchanted estate. Upon taking a rose from the estate to give to his youngest daughter, he is accosted by the eponymous Beast who issues the familiar ultimatum, "Your daughter or your life."
This time, though, the story is significantly richer and more nuanced, both in terms of the characters and their emotional depth as well as the back story surrounding just how the Beast got himself into this situation & what it will take to get him out. The magic is spooky, disorienting, and a bit malicious, and in fact that combined with the somewhat schizophrenic storytelling give the whole thing a rather dream-like, disorienting feel that makes parts of it difficult to follow (though I actually thought this worked & added to the ambience).
It only gets three stars from me, though, because a) the first 2/3 to 3/4 were soooooo slow & it felt like there were long stretches where nothing much happened or where what happened could have been seriously edited down for the sake of pacing; by that point in the narrative arc I really felt like I should have some idea where the story was going and some vague sense of how things would be resolved (or, at the very least, what there was to resolve). Then, suddenly, things take off & I spent the last quarter-to-a-third of the book trying to hold on & keep up as she threw critical revelation after critical revelation at me in a way that felt a bit tacked-on & not really tied into everything that came before. I am not even kidding that the last 20 pages contained enough richness and new material for an entire other book. If McKinley could have tightened up the middle of the book, spent some time hinting/alluding to some of the stuff you find out only at the end & connecting it to those middle chapters, then expanded the last 20 pages into, say, 100 or so, I think it could have been a really fantastic book.
Still, it was worth reading on a plane just to compare to Beauty and see how the story had morphed in her mind during those intervening two decades.