Scan barcode
A review by sinbetweenthelines
Beauty's Release by Anne Rice, A.N. Roquelaure
3.0
I simply cannot read the first two books of a trilogy without finding out how it all ends. What am I, a monster?
This third book did drag, I'm not going to lie. Maybe that's because Beauty was no longer the focus. I enjoy the male POVs, but this trilogy was intended to be about Beauty, after all, and I felt like that was lost a bit.
I needed to brace myself for some of the scenes in this book. This was a new level of intense exploration of kinks on the edge of oh so many boundaries was a lot, even for me, and I definitely needed some breaks in between. One thing that really disturbed me was the prolonged mention of genital mutilation. This wasn't meant to be a kink, as far as I'm aware, so I'm not sure why this thread of seriousness had to be woven in. Obviously the whole trilogy involved violence if you look at it outside of dark fiction, but this all too realistic violence against women in such a disturbing form really turned me off from scenes following that. After everything was so clean cut (i.e., no menstruation, no illness, no fecal matter, etc.), I just felt like this could've easily been left behind.
It did have an HEA at least, so yay! I expected the ending but at times I wasn't quite sure how we'd get there. Overall, I'm glad I read this series but have no plans to reread in the future.
This third book did drag, I'm not going to lie. Maybe that's because Beauty was no longer the focus. I enjoy the male POVs, but this trilogy was intended to be about Beauty, after all, and I felt like that was lost a bit.
I needed to brace myself for some of the scenes in this book. This was a new level of intense exploration of kinks on the edge of oh so many boundaries was a lot, even for me, and I definitely needed some breaks in between. One thing that really disturbed me was the prolonged mention of genital mutilation. This wasn't meant to be a kink, as far as I'm aware, so I'm not sure why this thread of seriousness had to be woven in. Obviously the whole trilogy involved violence if you look at it outside of dark fiction, but this all too realistic violence against women in such a disturbing form really turned me off from scenes following that. After everything was so clean cut (i.e., no menstruation, no illness, no fecal matter, etc.), I just felt like this could've easily been left behind.
It did have an HEA at least, so yay! I expected the ending but at times I wasn't quite sure how we'd get there. Overall, I'm glad I read this series but have no plans to reread in the future.