Take a photo of a barcode or cover
absireads 's review for:
Bookish and the Beast
by Ashley Poston
I really enjoyed this continuation of the Once Upon a Con series! This time, Poston has gone all in for a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but unlike with Geekerella or The Princess and the Fan Girl, this book is very, very much based on the Disney film. So much so that if I didn't know better I might have thought Disney-Hyperion published it -- or that it was a particularly good AU fanfic on AO3. I enjoyed it, mostly, and I really enjoyed that the book itself called out its own Disney-ness (at one point, a character muses on if the third installment of Starfield would be the last due to a merger with Disney). But, I did kind of miss the freedom and flexibility the first two books had for not having to follow a Disney film so closely.
I also think any modern B&tB retelling will have a few problems with getting the protagonists into the right situation ('Beast' 'trapped' in a 'castle', love interest who must get to know 'Beast' against their will). This novel did a pretty good job making it mostly believable, though it still had a bit of awkwardness in trying to justify the set-up. Even aside from that part, at times it felt a little clunky: in an effort to get in tons of references from the Disney film -- and from a number of other films and television series -- a few moments ceased to make any in-story logical sense. If you got the reference, though, it was almost worth it.
The plot was also painfully predictable (I mean, obviously the B&tB part was predictable, but even specific elements of this adaptation were predictable), which isn't always a bad thing (I read romance novels, after all!), but it did kind of frustrate me here. There's a moment about 65% of the way through that I was like, 'Ah yes, I see how this will all spool out now.' And it did. Just as I knew it would. But again, predictability isn't always a bad thing, I just wanted a bit more oomph from the characterization in the back half of the novel since the plot became so boilerplate. There's a particularly lovely emotionally-charged moment with the protagonist and a book that I wished the novel had lingered on a bit longer, because it had earned that... but instead, it quickly moved on.
But all in all, definitely a worthy entry into the Once Upon a Con series and very fun for anyone who loves B&tB tropes and retellings!!!
I also think any modern B&tB retelling will have a few problems with getting the protagonists into the right situation ('Beast' 'trapped' in a 'castle', love interest who must get to know 'Beast' against their will). This novel did a pretty good job making it mostly believable, though it still had a bit of awkwardness in trying to justify the set-up. Even aside from that part, at times it felt a little clunky: in an effort to get in tons of references from the Disney film -- and from a number of other films and television series -- a few moments ceased to make any in-story logical sense. If you got the reference, though, it was almost worth it.
The plot was also painfully predictable (I mean, obviously the B&tB part was predictable, but even specific elements of this adaptation were predictable), which isn't always a bad thing (I read romance novels, after all!), but it did kind of frustrate me here. There's a moment about 65% of the way through that I was like, 'Ah yes, I see how this will all spool out now.' And it did. Just as I knew it would. But again, predictability isn't always a bad thing, I just wanted a bit more oomph from the characterization in the back half of the novel since the plot became so boilerplate. There's a particularly lovely emotionally-charged moment with the protagonist and a book that I wished the novel had lingered on a bit longer, because it had earned that... but instead, it quickly moved on.
But all in all, definitely a worthy entry into the Once Upon a Con series and very fun for anyone who loves B&tB tropes and retellings!!!