Mark Pace

I received a copy of this book by the author via IndiGo Marketing & Design in exchange for an honest review

This story was practically an identical replication of Beauty and the Beast with some very minor changes. While it was cool to see it written in with a MM twist, it was too similar for me to love.

The story starts out with a completely conceited and rude prince who does not show mercy to a troll, who happens to be a sorcerer. The sorcerer casts a curse on the Prince to have his ugly insides match his outer exterior. The prince becomes the Beast. The main character is Bobby (who has the same initial as Belle) who loves to read books. There is an annoying/jerk guy named Gary (who has the same initial as Gaston) who feels that Bobby should be with him. Bobby lives with his father on a farm and are having tough times. When his father goes out to sell his prized pumpkin he gets caught in a storm, finds the Beast’s castle, and gets imprisoned by him for daring to pick a rose to bring home to Bobby. Just like the movie, Bobby goes looking for his father and offers himself as a trade. Bobby gets to stay with the beast in the castle and eventually gets to know him a little. Unfortunately, this is the part that was really lacking for me. I would have loved to see more of this actual relationship building. Instead, the relationship stuff happened off page and I felt like I was told about it instead of reading it. Of course, there is drama where Gary tries to go after the Beast and Bobby loves the Beast. There was so much in this book that was similar, but one difference that I did like was that instead of a rose wilting (like in the Disney movie), crying made a handkerchief fill up and when that was done, the curse was complete and he would stay as a Beast forever. The differences were minor, though.

In some ways, I wish the story was a little bit longer so that I could see more of the relationship develop between Bobby and the Beast, but by the end of the story, I was so annoyed that it was relatively unoriginal and the same story that I already knew that I would not have wanted to read much more. It wasn’t a bad story, it just needed a little more originality for me to make it great.… (meer)