Title: Beastly
Author: Alex Flinn
Genre: YA/Urban Fantasy/Romance
Amazon summary:
“I am a beast. A beast! Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright. I am a monster.
You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll,stay this way forever—ruined—unless I can break the spell.
Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.”
My summary:
Beauty and the Beast in New York.
Cheers:
- It was realistic and well-written.
- I enjoyed the beast’s thoughts. Sometimes a character’s thoughts are terrible and add nothing to the story, but this wasn’t the case.
- It was an enjoyable story. Nothing deep that you haven’t seen with every single “Beauty and the Beast” story, but it was still enjoyable.
Jeers:
- I hated the weird text chat thing. So weird and unnecessary.
- Not related: This has absolutely everything to do with the movie and not the book, but I hate that the movie beast and the book beast looked different. I think the movie beast was a lot better at making a modern day beast, though obviously it failed in making Lindy unattractive because Hollywood can’t possibly make a movie about genuinely unattractive people.
Would I recommend it?:
Yeah. I’ve been meaning to read this for years, literally, because my friend gave it to me with a huge bag of books in high school, but I just never got around to it. I watched the movie and remember liking it enough, but I felt like I might be a little old for the book. Still, I enjoyed it, and it’s been out long enough that it shouldn’t be hard enough to find a really cheap paperback. It’s literally just the story of Beauty and the Beast though, nothing new, but since I love the Beauty and the Beast that was fine for me.
Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Beastly-Alex-Flinn/dp/0061963283
I actually really liked the online chats between all the fairy tale characters.
On another note, I thought the movie beast was pretty attractive! I didn’t really the reason for the angst, lol.
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Yeah, he just looked punk. He was clearly Hollywoodified. While that look was still considered ugly by his character, he didn’t have it as bad as he did in the books.
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Um, honestly, in retrospect, he really should have kept the punk look.
Did you think the transformation in the book was too far-fetched for the modern day? Claws and fur juxtaposed with skyscrapers in New York DID kind of take me out of the story.
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I don’t think it was too far-fetched, but it stood out a bit, like you said. She tried so hard making everything modern, the drug-dealer dad, breaking in and getting caught on tape… but then he still had fur like the original story.
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Yeah, maybe it would have worked better if he had been ugly in modern terms. I was always weirded out by a girl falling in love with something furry, anyway. I’m usually a little more adventurous in my reading, but fur = pets to me. I just can’t shake the association.
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Ah, I love this one. I can never read enough Beauty and the Beast retellings lol
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Same here! Another story I love is Hades/Persephone when Persephone doesn’t completely hate Hades :p
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