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