Rating: ★★
Audience: Fantasy Romance
Length: 208 pages
Author: Elizabeth Lowham
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Release Date: May 9th, 2023
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads
BOOK SUMMARY:
Fantasy and reality collide in this retelling of Beauty and the Beast about a young woman’s heroic quest to save herself.
Yes, I went to the woods to save my father. But I also went hoping I would be eaten by the Beast. Because I didn’t think anything else could save me.
Beauty’s life is the stuff of fairy tales. The youngest in her family, Beauty isn’t trying to catch Stephan’s eye. He is the lord baron’s heir, well above her family’s modest station, but when he kisses her hand at a party, Beauty is swept away by his charm, his wit, and his passionate declarations of love.
Hearts can be untamable creatures, especially when touched by the fires of first love, and Beauty doesn’t see the truth of Stephan’s intentions until it is too late. Until he stops asking for Beauty’s love—and simply takes it from her one night despite her refusal.
Beauty locks away the secret of what happened to her, and when her father emerges from the enchanted forest with a stolen rose in his hand and the tale of a vicious beast on his breath, Beauty seizes the chance to run as far from Stephan as possible.
She has some experience with beasts, after all. Certainly the one in the forest couldn’t be any worse than the one she’s already encountered.
Breaking the Beast’s curse might be the key to discovering her own path to healing—and finding the courage to allow herself to feel reborn.
Thank you to Shadow Mountain for an ARC.
NOPE.
I want to be able to come here and tell y’all I enjoyed this, but I just flat out did not.
This wasn’t a retelling so much as a direct copycat of the original movie. I don’t feel like I got anything new out of this story and instead wished I was just watching the movie.
At barely 200 pages there isn’t enough context or story to get the full sense of Beauty, her family, or her relationship with Beast. Beauty and Beast play make believe games while in the castle and hardly talk to one another for most of the book.
There’s some small good moments about finding light in the dark and such. That’s about all I can pull out that I liked.
No world building (once again I feel like it was leaning on the hope that I had seen the movie), random flashbacks to two different time points that didn’t flow, and multiple other things.
I unfortunately cannot recommend this one.
Overall audience notes:
- Fantasy Retelling
- Language: none
- Romance: kisses
- Trigger/Content Warnings: mentions of sexual assault and potential rape (on page, but extremely vague)
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