This book presents an intriguing take on the classic "Beauty and the Beast" story. In this version, the main character, Arabella, is considered too ambitious and emotional and becomes the "Beast." As a result of societal pressure to conform, Arabella's inability to suppress her passions leads to a curse that confines her and her loved ones to a castle. Years later, a thief named Beau arrives, offering hope for breaking the curse. The novel explores themes of self-acceptance and societal expectations, challenging the traditional ideas of beauty and power. Donnelly's storytelling is captivating and urges readers to confront the emotional prisons we create for ourselves, making this story a powerful reminder of the importance of being true to oneself.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC copy for review! It was an interesting read with a gender swapped main cast of the beast and the handsome? It had a more whimsy prose that was fun and I enjoyed reading it!

I found Jennifer Donnelly years ago and devoured her Tea Rose trilogy. I read through that and several of her other works and then time passed and I fell out of touch with her work. Fast-forward many, many years and I came across an ARC of Beastly Beauty. In some ways it was like re-uniting with an old friend but one who has changed slightly in the years.

Beastly Beauty is a re-telling of the story of Beauty and the Beast but instead of the beast being a man, the beast is a woman. Arabella has been cursed to change into a beast until love enters her heart. Her castle has been isolated, a decaying bridge connecting it to the outside world. Servants and her Court have been imprisoned with her for nearly one hundred years. At the center of the castle lives a giant gold clock that ticks down the time.

To this scene enters Beau, a thief with his own past and hurts to heal. Beau and Arabella slowly being to unravel their secrets and discover how to live, love and move forward. A truly beautiful story with some twists that make for a richer story than the original fairy tale. Highly recommended.

Beau and his fellow band of thieves are running from the law in the forest when suddenly a fog descends upon them, and a gothic castle appears. Finding what they think is a safe haven, they enter the castle.
They start to steal what they can, when suddenly, a beast appears. The beast tries to take away their leader, but instead, the thieves trade their youngest thief, Beau, for their leader and tell Beau they’ll come back for him.
Now, Beau has to find a way to escape.

There’s a lot more to the summary, but I’ll just stop there 😅

I have a lot of mixed emotions about this book. I LOVE reading Beauty and the Beast retellings! I’m always looking for ones to read, especially unique ones, and this one definitely had a unique take on the fairytale.

This is a gender-bent retelling of Beauty and the Beast with Beau being the “beauty” and Arabella being the beast. Beau is a thief and Arabella supposedly is a terrible selfish girl who only cares about herself, and not to mention she has a lot of secrets. Neither are exactly the type of character you would want to love.

Beau had a charm to him that you couldn’t help but love as you read the book, and especially the fact that he has a younger brother that he loves and needs to get to, and that just made me love him more.

Arabella, I couldn’t figure out at first. She wasn’t nice, but she also seemed to be a facade of her true self. It’s interesting to learn about her as the story progresses.

This take on the fairytale was unique in that, not only is it gender-bent, but Arabella’s is cursed with her emotions being live persons who basically talk her down and make her feel like the worst person. It was an interesting on how one may view themselves and how they fight to escape those self-damaging emotions to come out at the top in the end.

There’s also a few cute scenes in here that made me go “awww”, and maybe a bit corny, but hey! Corny is fine sometimes! I also liked reading a book that’s YA, borderline MG, with no cursing, or almost no cursing. It was refreshing.

So, those are a few things I enjoyed and appreciated about this story.

Now, for what bothered me….(there might be very slight spoilers down below)…




Based on the setting, this seemed to be more in the past, but the phrases and word choices were very modern and felt very out of place for the setting I anticipated. It confused me.

With that being said, the writing was not my favorite. The style seemed to try to be poetic or old English style, but then a word like crap is thrown in and it ruins the aesthetic of the book and setting.

The romance and plot fell very flat after the first 1/3 of the book I would say. The start of the book is very well done, and then suddenly it just kind of turns into a mess. The romance is insta-love. Like I was shocked at how quick they fell in love 😹 It didn’t make any sense.

I think what bothered me the most is that there is absolutely no explanation as to how this curse happened. There’s a brief scene that kind of tells you when it happened, but literally no detailed explanation as to how this happened. There seems to be no magic in this world and yet there is in this castle and with Arabella, but how…???? How did her emotions become humans???? And why didn’t they all disappear at the end once the curse was broken???

And the way the curse was broken, I mean really? That could not have been possible to just break that quickly with the “requirements” when we had what? Half an hour remaining?

Anyways, I really liked the concept and it is unique. The writing style and details of how everything came about was lacking for me, but others may enjoy, especially if you need a fantasy to read if you’re just getting into fantasy!

I received an early e-ARC to read through NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

I'm a devoted fan of Jennifer Donnelly! She manages to write dark, magical tales filled with beautiful prose that captures you from the first page. This retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" is clever and fresh featuring a female "beast" in the main literary role. There is so much emotional depth and symbolism throughout that gives just the right flare to this world of magical realism. Both Arabella and Beau are broken characters, and their backstories (and the snippets we get about the side characters!) add another emotional layer to the tale. As the clock ticks closer to the final chime, ending the curse, but also the end of everyone's life, the desperation and suspense is suffocating. Secrets, mystery, reflection, self-flagellation, learning to forgive and love...this book is more than just a fairytale.

While I enjoyed the banter and buildup of our couple's relationship, the intense feelings/love between Arabella and Beau felt a little much too soon. We had foes, friends...FEELINGS! Almost like we needed an extra chapter filling in with evidence of this sudden declaration. even though the chemistry and connection were there. I still adored the couple...and it is a fairytale, so...:)

4.5 stars

Have you ever been reading a book, and just had to stop, breathe, and just sit and think about how beautiful what you just read was? I had to do that multiple times in this book. This is not just another Beauty and the Beast retelling. This is a deep look into emotions, how they affect us, and what can go wrong when we let them take over. And it was just so good. I can't seem to put into words how amazing this book was.

Thank you to Jennifer Connelly, NetGalley, and Scholastic Press for an ARC of Beastly Beauty. All opinions are my own.

I was really excited for this one - as a big time Beauty and the Beast girlie, I was hype to read a gender-bent version with the typically masculine Beast role played by the FMC. Unfortunately, I don’t think the book really held up.

While the idea of the ladies of Arabella’s court being her emotions was clever, the chaotic presence of all of them went on too long without being explained. By the time the explanation came, I was too annoyed with their inexplicable role in the story and tired of hearing about them.

The multiple third person POVs also confused me a *lot*. I would be spending the first few lines trying to figure out who was speaking instead of engaging with the content.

My last big issue is that I think the “love” between Arabella and Beau came out of nowhere. They spent little to no time together, and suddenly were exchanging “I love you’s”? At least Belle/Beauty in the original story actually had some quality time with the Beast before falling in love.

The last 7% of the book redeemed a lot of the failings of the previous 93%, moving it from a 2 star to a 3.

Beastly Beauty is a gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast. While there are seemingly millions of other retellings of this tale that also did a gender-swap, Donnelly does a nice job of putting her own spin on it. The beast in this story is not physically a beast, but instead has the beastly side of a personality. The main concept of the curse surrounding negative emotions compared to those being intwined with a beastly outer appearance, such as the Disney version, was unique in its execution. In this story thief Beauregard Armando Gernandez de Navare finds himself trapped in a castle he tried to rob. He ends up meeting resident Arabella and the two align themselves together to try and break the curse to be free.

The writing of the story is easy to follow, however, I think it had a little trouble in its identity. On the surface, this novel seems to be a young adult one, yet it is also read as middle grade. There are novels out there that have balanced both genres together, however, it is rare where it doesn’t come across as not knowing its place. This novel was, unfortunately, on that side where it kept trying to tell the reader it was young adult, but the evidence pointed to middle grade. As for the curse, it was a great concept, but I think there needed to be more to really illustrate it to the reader. It seemed more to be told to the reader rather than shown. I think some flashbacks to Arabella’s childhood to show her emotions would align a lot more with what the blurb promised. Another expansion that I wanted is romance. As Beau is trying to escape the castle, there were not many interactions with Arabella. For a romance in a story, I expected more than the writing delivered. Overall, I think the concept of the novel was amazing, but the execution just did not quite get there for me. I do still enjoy Donnelly’s writing and would try another from her in the future.

**I give a special thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Scholastic Press, for the opportunity to read this entertaining novel. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.**

Jennifer Donnelly's fairy tale retellings are always so creative with their twists, but they always fall short of perfection.

To understand why I think so, let me give you a rundown of the strengths of Beastly Beauty first:
• It has one of the most original interpretations of the curse that nobody else has done before.
• It has strong and well-defined characters for Beauty and for Beast.
• It respects the tale’s core theme but characters have to work for their own redemption.
• It has the most original and heart-pounding Beauty-meets-Beast scene I’ve ever read.
• It has a nice cast of male and female secondary characters with their own personality and quirks.
• It has a setting that’s a mix of a realistic life in a castle and Alice-in-Wonderland whackery.

That’s a rock-solid foundation of positives, isn’t it? And all taken together, they make this gender-swapped retelling one of the best I’ve read, which for me is saying a lot.

(Full review in link.)

Interesting gender flipped retelling of the story of Beauty and the Beast. I always like books that tell a tale from a different point of view. If you like fairy tales this is worth a read! Thanks to NetGalley and Scholastic for the opportunity to read and review this book.

“You think love is for weak people, but you’re wrong. Love is for the strongest. The bravest. The fiercest.”

I felt so honored to get this ARC from netgalley. I have read Jennifer Donnelly’s book Stepsister and absolutely LOVED it. I can say this one was just as good if not better. Jennifer is seriously so creative with her characters and the meaning behind them. I loved Beau! His sweetness and tender heart really shone once you looked past who he was pretending to be. Once we saw past Arabella’s walls I loved her brilliance, fierceness, and her desire to make the world more beautiful. This book had deep meanings that really spoke to me, but the fantasy aspect kept me so engaged and entertained. This is a must read!
🗝️Fractured Fairytale
🗝️Mild Swearing (No F words)
🗝️Kissing Only
🗝️CW: Violence, Death, Abuse

There were some really great things about Beastly Beauty, which was one of the best Beauty and the Beast retellings I've read. I thought the interpretation of the curse was phenomenal, I loved the extended cast, and I thought the world building was perfectly whimsical. Unfortunately, as someone who loves a multiple POV and short chapters, the format and general layout of this story had me so thrown of it made the entire book just okay.

A great reminder to live life and write your own story!

19yo Beau rides with a group of thieves who saved his life and expects him to earn his way by stealing, even though he only wants to get away and retrieve his younger brother Matti from the orphanage. 18yo Arabella is a daughter of a Duke, living in a cursed castle with a dangerous beast that appears at midnight. When Beau and his group arrive at the castle, no one is around but the dining table is set for a feast. They eat until a beast arrives, then run, leaving Beau behind. What Beau finds, as he’s trapped in the castle, changes his life forever.

Likes/dislikes: The story contains good messages. The clever names of the court ladies were fun to figure out. The romance could have been more developed.
Mature Content: PG for kissing.
Language: R for 83 swears and no f-words.
Violence: PG-13 for bloody fighting.
Ethnicity: Beau is Spanish and Arabella is white.

I really enjoyed this one! I was fascinated with the idea of a gender swapped beauty and the beast retelling and this one was great. I thought it had a unique spin on the fairytale and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. There were some very clever play on words and names throughout that I also enjoyed. I would have liked to see a more fleshed out ending, but the one in the book is a decent ending!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

'Beastly Beauty' by Jennifer Donnelly presents a refreshing twist on the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast, offering a unique gender-bent retelling. While it may not fully satisfy those seeking a complex plot, it does have its moments that could resonate with a younger audience.

One of the book's strengths is its portrayal of villains and overall message. The story deviates from the classic tale, adding more dimension and depth to the themes. Despite some confusion with the names, the payoff with the villain reveal is satisfying.

However, the romance between Beau and Arabella feels rushed and underdeveloped. It transitions from zero to 'insta-love 'with little build-up, and its impact on the plot could be better. The large number of characters also presents a challenge, as none of them truly stand out, making it difficult for readers to form a connection. A more focused approach to key characters could have given them more depth and influence on the story.

While the ending of "Beastly Beauty" is a saving grace, offering a satisfying conclusion, the journey to get there feels underexplored. More depth and dimension to the characters could have made their development more engaging and impactful.

Beastly beauty is a gender swap approach of Beauty and the Beast. While it’s been a while since I’ve read an YA book, I was intrigued by the premise of the retelling. The beast is this retelling is Arabella and Beau is the beauty, the story starts of slow Arabella is surrounded by creepy court and Beau is theif who gets left behind by his “family”.

The book is slow paced even though a lot is happening between Arabella and Beau, I felt like the actual plot didn’t really pick up till after the 55% mark and I found my self skim reading some parts. Over-all I enjoyed the authors writing style but I figured the whole secret before the “big” reveal and was a bit bored by the characters.

I really enjoyed this gender-flip retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I like it when Donnelly gives a literary nod to the Grimm brothers as she does in this book. My favorite part is the epilogue when she tells the readers to boldly write their own stories.

Not my usual genre, but I was intrigued by the gender swap approach and wanted to try this one. It's an entertaining take on a "tale as old as time."

This book just rides in the middle for me. I didn't love the characters, but I didn't hate them. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the darkness of the retelling.

A young thief, trapped inside a cursed castle, is the unwilling guest of a beautiful, yet distant noblewoman, her creepy ladies in waiting and her loyal servants. Confident in his good looks and braggadocious ways, Beau is certain he can escape and make off with loot to rescue his brother - until he encounters both the fearsome beast that roams the night, and the luminous little girl locked in the cellar. A reimagined, baroque Beauty and the Beast gets a comprehensive update that will resonate with modern readers. Allegories tend to the didactic, and some clunky anagrams and anachronistically modern attitudes may irk fairy tale purists, but the romance, drama and on-point introspection will engage readers looking for a thought-provoking love story. Set in a fantasy medieval Spain. All characters read as white. LQBTQ diversity included. Thanks to Scholastic and NetGalley for an Advance Readers Copy in return for an unbiased review.