heidinelt 's review for:

The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty's Prince by Serena Valentino

3.0

---

Valentino's interpretation of the Beauty and the Beast story does a fair job of providing background to the Beast's story, outlining the choices that Prince made to anger the witches and bring the curse upon himself. It highlights the character flaws that the Prince possessed including vanity, pride and anger and how those flaws led him down a self-destructive path. While the narrative does a good job of showing the back story, it fails to show the Beast's perspective at the most critical point in the text, namely when he makes the choice to save Belle. By switching the point of view in this section to that of the witches, the audience is left wondering exactly what the Beast was thinking, and instead there is a shift that highlights the cruel and vindictive nature of the witches and not the lessons learned by the Beast. The book does include a fun reference to the Little Mermaid that Disney fans will love.

This book is a good choice for people interested in Disney fiction and connections made between Disney produced fairy tales.

This book was a review copy provided by the publishers for SWON libraries.