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atrailofpages 's review for:
Beastly Beauty
by Jennifer Donnelly
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beau and his fellow band of thieves are running from the law in the forest when suddenly a fog descends upon them, and a gothic castle appears. Finding what they think is a safe haven, they enter the castle.
They start to steal what they can, when suddenly, a beast appears. The beast tries to take away their leader, but instead, the thieves trade their youngest thief, Beau, for their leader and tell Beau they’ll come back for him.
Now, Beau has to find a way to escape.
There’s a lot more to the summary, but I’ll just stop there 😅
I have a lot of mixed emotions about this book. I LOVE reading Beauty and the Beast retellings! I’m always looking for ones to read, especially unique ones, and this one definitely had a unique take on the fairytale.
This is a gender-bent retelling of Beauty and the Beast with Beau being the “beauty” and Arabella being the beast. Beau is a thief and Arabella supposedly is a terrible selfish girl who only cares about herself, and not to mention she has a lot of secrets. Neither are exactly the type of character you would want to love.
Beau had a charm to him that you couldn’t help but love as you read the book, and especially the fact that he has a younger brother that he loves and needs to get to, and that just made me love him more.
Arabella, I couldn’t figure out at first. She wasn’t nice, but she also seemed to be a facade of her true self. It’s interesting to learn about her as the story progresses.
This take on the fairytale was unique in that, not only is it gender-bent, but Arabella’s is cursed with her emotions being live persons who basically talk her down and make her feel like the worst person. It was an interesting on how one may view themselves and how they fight to escape those self-damaging emotions to come out at the top in the end.
There’s also a few cute scenes in here that made me go “awww”, and maybe a bit corny, but hey! Corny is fine sometimes! I also liked reading a book that’s YA, borderline MG, with no cursing, or almost no cursing. It was refreshing.
So, those are a few things I enjoyed and appreciated about this story.
Now, for what bothered me….(there might be very slight spoilers down below)…
Based on the setting, this seemed to be more in the past, but the phrases and word choices were very modern and felt very out of place for the setting I anticipated. It confused me.
With that being said, the writing was not my favorite. The style seemed to try to be poetic or old English style, but then a word like crap is thrown in and it ruins the aesthetic of the book and setting.
The romance and plot fell very flat after the first 1/3 of the book I would say. The start of the book is very well done, and then suddenly it just kind of turns into a mess. The romance is insta-love. Like I was shocked at how quick they fell in love 😹 It didn’t make any sense.
I think what bothered me the most is that there is absolutely no explanation as to how this curse happened. There’s a brief scene that kind of tells you when it happened, but literally no detailed explanation as to how this happened. There seems to be no magic in this world and yet there is in this castle and with Arabella, but how…???? How did her emotions become humans???? And why didn’t they all disappear at the end once the curse was broken???
And the way the curse was broken, I mean really? That could not have been possible to just break that quickly with the “requirements” when we had what? Half an hour remaining?
Anyways, I really liked the concept and it is unique. The writing style and details of how everything came about was lacking for me, but others may enjoy, especially if you need a fantasy to read if you’re just getting into fantasy!
I received an early e-ARC to read through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.