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bookshelvish 's review for:
Marvelous
by Molly Greeley
2⭐️. About to be brutally honest so if you loved this book, move along, because we are adhering to honesty over kindness for a moment.
As @cityofstarlightandbooks can attest because she was on Facetime with me when I made this decision: I was VERY CLOSE to unhauling this book a few months ago because I hated the cover and had little to no interest in reading it. Readers - trust your freaking gut. Don’t be like me. I read the synopsis (which I never do???) and decided it maybe intrigued me enough to keep. Then I pulled it blindly as a March TBR pick which I have enormous regrets about.
This gets 1 star for being a book and another star because the research and writing was superb. I liked the narrator too. Everything else can respectfully take a hike. This was supposed to be a possible origin story for Beauty & the Beast, set in the French court of Catherine d’Medici. I know it’s historical and I know it was a different time. But I just could not get past the way that everyone talked about Pedro. He’s supposed to have a condition that makes him excessively hairy and as a result he’s basically a laughing stock and treated as a carnival animal and it genuinely made me want to throw up. I know it’s fictional I just hated it. If you’ve read The Carnivorous Carnival, the ninth Series of Unfortunate Events book, I had similar beef with that but this one is seriously on crack. And I’m sure that aspect of it is accurate, too, it’s more just my own personal aversion.
On top of that, the story felt very meandering and I wasn’t always a fan of the characters or the plot itself which made it a kind of unenjoyable ride. I did the audio and am glad I did because even that felt super long.
I’ll be giving this book away so if you want to read it let me know 😂
As @cityofstarlightandbooks can attest because she was on Facetime with me when I made this decision: I was VERY CLOSE to unhauling this book a few months ago because I hated the cover and had little to no interest in reading it. Readers - trust your freaking gut. Don’t be like me. I read the synopsis (which I never do???) and decided it maybe intrigued me enough to keep. Then I pulled it blindly as a March TBR pick which I have enormous regrets about.
This gets 1 star for being a book and another star because the research and writing was superb. I liked the narrator too. Everything else can respectfully take a hike. This was supposed to be a possible origin story for Beauty & the Beast, set in the French court of Catherine d’Medici. I know it’s historical and I know it was a different time. But I just could not get past the way that everyone talked about Pedro. He’s supposed to have a condition that makes him excessively hairy and as a result he’s basically a laughing stock and treated as a carnival animal and it genuinely made me want to throw up. I know it’s fictional I just hated it. If you’ve read The Carnivorous Carnival, the ninth Series of Unfortunate Events book, I had similar beef with that but this one is seriously on crack. And I’m sure that aspect of it is accurate, too, it’s more just my own personal aversion.
On top of that, the story felt very meandering and I wasn’t always a fan of the characters or the plot itself which made it a kind of unenjoyable ride. I did the audio and am glad I did because even that felt super long.
I’ll be giving this book away so if you want to read it let me know 😂