Reviewed by Briana @ Pages Unbound on
The prose irritated me from the start, but I decided to stick out the book and see if the plot would redeem it. The book opens in a chat room, with our protagonist the Beast talking to others who have gotten on the bad side of a witch's transformation. Parts of this are actually clever. The characters here have distinct voices, and the frog is terrible at typing due to his webbed feet. However, chat speak isn't my thing, and I was happy to see the whole book isn't written this way. However, the prose of the "regular" narration is still short and choppy, the sort of thing I imagine adults write when they think "I need to write in a simple style that will appeal to teens." I tried to ignore it, as I'm afraid to say I think most contemporary literature isn't interested in beautiful prose anyway.
Unfortunately, I never got on board with the story either. There's having a theme and then there's repeatedly throwing the theme in reader's faces. In Beastly, we learn that outer beauty is meaningless; inner beauty counts. Fair enough, but the Beast (before transformation) talks about nothing but outer beauty. I understand. He's shallow. He's vain. It's why he gets cursed. But even someone obsessed with his looks and who judges other people based on their looks must have other interests, right? Maybe sports? Or expensive cheeses? Or networking for future career opportunities? There are a million ways a character can be "a shallow rich kid," but the Beast only talks about how ugly or beautiful people are. It gets old really fast. And then, of course, the theme continues to come up throughout the novel.
I might have dealt with all of this if the romance were able to save it. After all, romance is a main draw of the fairy tale, right? However, I felt that the pacing was off, and I never became invested in the relationship. The girl who plays Belle in this retelling is nice, but I didn't feel sparks between her and Beast. And there were not a lot of cute moments of their budding romance. I simply wasn't interested in any of it.
Flinn does a good job of imagining how it would be possible for "Beauty and the Beast" to occur in modern-day New York, but that isn't enough for me to buy into the story. With flat characters, rushed romance, and irritating prose, the book just doesn't appeal to me. I don't think I'll be reading anything else by Alex Flinn in the near future.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 1 November, 2016: Finished reading
- 1 November, 2016: Reviewed