A review by fiction_aficionado
Beauty Among Ruins by J'nell Ciesielski

adventurous inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Who doesn’t love a Beauty and the Beast retelling? Not that this is a retelling per se, but it has all the essential points of the story, most importantly a beauty, a beast, and a castle! Alec and Lily are the kind of characters you can’t help but love, flaws and all, and they’re such opposites in personality that the tension is all kinds of wonderful. A big part of the enjoyment in this story was watching them grow to understand each other little by little—a process that was by no means smooth!

Even if one puts aside the Beauty and the Beast trope, this story has so much going for it. The Scottish setting comes alive both in Ciesielski’s descriptions and in the characters’ interactions with their surroundings, and the many facets of Lily’s winsome personality are reflected in her interactions with a varied cast of characters: her cousin Bertie, the dragonish Matron Strom; the catty nurse Esther Hartley; Alec’s frail and sickly sister, Viola; and a multitude of other characters from convalescing soldiers through to the slimy journalist Richard Wright.

My heart went out to Alec in his struggle to keep his family home amidst the other burdens weighing on him: his sister’s health, his own inability to enlist, a mother who sees what she wishes to see rather than the reality of her circumstances. There are a few other things I won’t mention here for spoiler reasons, but suffice it to say there’s a lot more going on in this story than just a Beauty and the Beast retelling. 

I did feel as though everything came together in a bit of a rush at the end—or maybe it was simply that so many things fell into place at the one time, some of them quite coincidentally at the eleventh hour—but overall, a story I would readily recommend to historical romance lovers.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not influenced the content of my review, which is my honest and unbiased opinion.