Of Beast and Beauty
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
I wasn't expecting a lot going into this - it's a YA romance retelling of Beauty and the Beast, so I wasn't exactly expecting Charlotte Bronte here. But, uh... yikes. The basic premise as set out in the first few chapters is interesting - a young witch, raised by an evil adoptive mother to take revenge on the kingdom, somehow, for some reason; her new husband despises her because she's a witch and he was forced to marry her rather than the woman he was originally set to wed.
The writing just made it so hard to get through. I think the heroine says “my adoptive/adopted mother” like 10 times in the first chapter, which is 9 pages long. We get it! The third chapter gives us a sentence that's like “My nightmare faded away to just a nightmare, a bad dream.” I'm paraphrasing, but it was really repetitive.
This book couldn't hold my interest and I ended up skimming the rest of it.
I gave it 2 stars because to be totally fair, I'm not the target audience for a Young Adult novel (a few of the things I found cringey, like the name Lady Eville of the town of Nihil - like nihilism?? - I think I would've found funny if I was 12, so that didn't affect my star rating). I don't think the writing is really up to snuff even for it being YA romance, but it's certainly not the WORST thing I've ever read. Even as an actual Young Adult I definitely read worse stuff.