BEAUTY is a wonderful fairy tale adaptation. It is told by Beauty who is the youngest of a merchant's three daughters. When the merchant who owns his own fleet of ships runs into bad luck - storms, lost ships, lost cargo - it becomes necessary to sell everything and move out of the city.

Among the losses is the man the eldest daughter Grace loves. But the blacksmith who has been working in her father's shipyard and who loves the middle sister Hope has a solution. He has a chance to go back to the village where he was raised to open up the blacksmith's forge and offers to take them all with him.

They find the journey difficult and the new lifestyle without servants to be hard, but they do adapt with the help of the locals. Beauty misses her life of scholarship but adapts to being the one able to do the harder work along with Greatheart, the large horse a friend in the city gave her.

Time passes...Hope marries her blacksmith, Grace seems to be recovering from her grief for her lost sailor, and then word comes that one of their father's ships has made it home. He travels to take care of things and finds he has but a little money when everything is wrapped up. He buys a horse to take him home to his daughters. When he is nearly home, there is a sudden blizzard, and he gets lost in the magical forest that is near their home. He stumbles upon a mysterious castle and spends the night.

When he is ready to leave in the morning, he decides to take one rose from the garden since the only thing Beauty had asked him to bring back was seeds to grow roses. This theft angers the castle's owner, and he demands one of the man's daughters as payment.

Beauty, who was christened Honour, decides that she will be the one to repay her father's debt and finds herself in a magical castle complete with invisible servants, a library with books not yet written, and a lonely Beast.

I loved the lyrical language and the well-developed personalities of the characters. This is still one of my favorites by this author and one of my favorite fairy tale adaptations. ( )

Very engaging retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast. I enjoyed it ! ( )

I have loved this book since I was in high school. This Beauty really resonated with me - a not-really-beautiful bookworm who is, by her own admission, better suited to manual tasks than embroidery. Watching her relationship with the Beast change until she can at last admit to herself his importance to her is enchanting. ( )

I loved this. Beauty and the Beast is my favourite fairytale and this retelling is simply magic. Beauty was an extremely loveable character who is genuine and hardworking and honest and fair and practical. She is smart and caring and adaptable to bad circumstances. But it's not just her, her entire family are the stars of this book. All of the secondary characters are well drawn and fully developed. Hope and Grace and Ger and Father are all fierce and caring and loveable characters in their own right. All that besides, it was so nice to see a family portrayed as loving and caring and loyal and defensive of each other. There was no real bickering or animosity between them, they all supported and cared for each other and the amount of love was perfect.

Although a fairytale of love and acceptance, the romance itself is of little importance. Mainly the author focuses on developing the friendship between Beauty and Beast and showing how they come to care about each other.

Something about this book screamed more. As in more than anything else. I can't place my finger on what the more is but it's there. It just felt more fleshed out and emotive than many retellings. ( )

Well crafted retelling and engaging to read. Sorta meh on the romance but thats just my usual attitude so. ( )