Bookworm Dreams

Beauty and The Beast is my favorite Disney cartoon. Grumpy heroes are always so cute and Beast won my heart when he gave a library as a gift to Belle. So, whenever I stumble upon the retelling of this tale I am excited because I hope it will have that same spark, that same magic that will make me hum:
Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme…

On the surface Beauty’s Beast is a perfect retelling of the famous fairytale. Eric is cursed by a witch to slowly transform into the beast.
To fulfill a promise to his dead father and not die without an heir, he gets married to a young girl Kristine who is sentenced for murder. Kristine is so grateful to Eric for saving her from the death sentence and she tries to be a good wife to him. Slowly they fall in love…

What can go wrong? A lot of things:

1.) Since Eric is bent on having an heir pronto, he immediately starts to have sex every night with Kristine. She dutifully and silently lies. At the beginning a lot of times it’s bordering with rape for me.

2.) Descriptions of sex had a lot of archaic descriptions that belong to vintage historical romance novels.
"Desire rose within him, a desire to bury himself within her."
"Her womanly scent rose up to tantalize him, stirring his blood, his desire."
A lot of times I was not sure if Ashley Adams wrote about sex or farming.
"He would go to her tonight and plant his seed within her. If there was any mercy in the world, his seed would take root and he could leave here, leave her."

These two facts made my reading of Beauty’s Beast a boring and irritating task. I kept on reading hoping for some glorious moment that will make all my suffering worthwhile. For a glimpse of true Beauty and The Beast magic to appear. But it never happened.

There were a lot of things that could have won me over:
1. Eric’s fear about losing his humanity as the transformation to beast happens. Fear that he will lose his memories…
2. A lot of my favorite romantic scenes from Beauty and The Beast cartoon were recreated: he saving her from the wolves, she nursing his wounds, …
3. Paranormal elements in story, with witches and wizards and magic. Things go crazy & exciting as the conclusion is near…

But no. All Beauty’s Beast succeeded is to make me gnash my teeth and yell in my mind.
- At Kristine for being submissive, for not standing up for herself from the start.
- At Eric for sleeping with her and enjoying it, although he was conscious she didn’t want it.
- At Amanda Ashley for the outdated writing style.

At the end all I can say is – well at least it is over. But I don’t think I will have enough courage to brave another book by Amanda Ashley again.

Recommended only for fans of bodice ripper historical romance novels who don’t mind that there are witches and other magic in the story. This Beauty and The Beast retelling is not for all fairy tale lovers. Approach with caution.

Disclaimer: I received this ebook from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.