When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James
(Book #2 of the Fairy Tales series)
Rating: 🍁🍁🍁
This is an entertaining retelling of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale. I enjoyed the colourful characters, and the witty dialogue. I liked how Piers and Linnet actually get to know each other before falling in love (that's not a spoiler - we all knew it was going to happen). There are themes of forgiveness and the importance of choice that elevate the story from being simply a romance, though it's that as well.
What kept it from receiving the fourth maple leaf was the implausability of it all. I don't expect a fairy tale to adhere to historical accuracy - I can suspend my disbelief with the best of them. However, this didn't strike me as a fairy tale world. It was clearly set in Georgian England, in our own universe, and I'm highly skeptical that things would have worked out as they did, or that people would have reacted as depicted.
That being said, I didn't have to work too hard to ignore the historical disparities, which says something about the quality of Ms. James' writing.
Sidenote - The entire time I read this book (at least, after meeting Piers), I kept thinking that I'd somehow stumbled on an eighteenth century version of the TV show "House." Kudos to Ms. James for fessing up to the direct inspiration in her author's note!
No comments:
Post a Comment