The title led me to believe this would be a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which it really wasn’t. There were far too many departures to the original story, though there were a few nods to it… like, there was a beast, though while the male lead does transform into a werewolf, it’s not him. There was a rose pin referred to on numerous occasions. And while the protagonist is beautiful and captive, it’s not at all for the reasons in the original story. All of these departures were enough to keep my interest for 3/4 of the story, though by the last 1/4 I had to speed it up to 2.0 speed just to get through the last of it.
The protagonist, Rosalie, is a mage, and she’s feared for that reason in a kingdom that doesn’t understand magic and therefore fears it (a very, very common trope in YA fiction I’ve found). She was betrothed to Prince Xander because of a curse from her mage mother, and he hates her for it and locks her away… only she disguises herself to be able to leave her cell, and he falls in love with her in the process. The rest kind of blurred together… there was a beast killing people in the kingdom, and Rosalie makes a deal with Xander that she will help to banish the beast and then leave. There’s a whole lot about Rosalie’s magical sisters and mirrors and her powers and her real parents and other various side-plots. When she tries to make good on this promise at the end, she vanishes, and there is a Cinderella-esque hunt for her throughout the land. She and Prince Xander have a gag-worthy reunion at the end with all kinds of undying love declarations, of course. (Maybe I’m reading the wrong genre?) And then there’s a setup for a sequel I won’t be reading…
The characters were decently done, though, and there was just enough fresh and new that it kept me reading until the end. And it was clean.
My rating: ** 1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none
Political content: none
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