3.67 AVERAGE

chrissyreadit's profile picture

chrissyreadit's review

3.5
adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
book_dragon2010's profile picture

book_dragon2010's review

5.0
adventurous dark funny inspiring reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
adventurous medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lynneelue's review

4.0

The slow reveal of what was going on made the first 200 pages quite the page turner! I enjoyed the freshness of the plot, I liked the characters, and I found the writing style engaging. Perhaps the last 100 pages was a little long, but it ended nicely.

lizzystu's review

4.0
adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

fishpopsicle's review

3.0

The curse is her fault -- after all, there's nothing more "beastly" than a girl who expresses her anger -- and the only way to break it is to find a boy who loves her for her true a cruel task for a girl who's been told she's impossible to love.


Beastly Beauty is a reverse gendered retelling of Beauty and the Beast following our beast Arabella and our beauty Beau.
I enjoyed the overall theme of this book, encouraging women to embrace themselves for all of their emotions and passions, not just the traits that would make them appealing for possible partners. The ladies of Arabella's court being her negative emotions (rage, shame, fear) personified and all of her positive emotions seemingly missing was a very fun concept. I felt like the characters themselves were well written and enjoyable. I did not on the other hand enjoy the pacing of this book at all. For almost the first half of the book it felt like not a lot was happening at all, then very suddenly everything dropped all at once. Beau and Arabella went from never seeing/talking to each other to instalove and I feel like it would have been more enjoyable if their relationship had been built at a more steady pace.

Rating: 2.25 rounded up
I received an ARC of this book from Netgally and Scholastic in exchange for an honest review.

anbar's review

1.0

DNF at 77 pages; the pace was too slow, and though the book blurb focuses on Arabella, she barely had any 'on-screen' time in all that time, never mind enough time to be shaped as a tree-dimensional character. The focus so far is instead on the thief, Beau, who gets caught while trying to do one last job to save his sickly brother, and now that he's stuck in the castle (because the bridge got knocked down) is just trying to manipulate his way out of it.
77 pages in, readers only know there's a curse because of the book-blurb (Beau certainly has no clue), and since we've seen Arabella looking human enough we don't yet know what the curse is. I skimmed for a bit, but found no hook to keep me going; my TBR is too long to force myself any further.
thebookhunter13's profile picture

thebookhunter13's review

5.0

Fantastic! Donnelly at her best, and as always so creative and imaginative. Love the life lesson in this story… Life is what you, and only you, make it. The anagrams were pretty cool too.

giggsmcgill's review

4.0

Listen to this as an audiobook, found it very hard to follow along with which emotion was talking with the anagrams. Definitely wish I would’ve read rather then listened. But still enjoyed it.

mybook_obsession's review

3.5
adventurous fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes