An interesting romantic take on a classic story. Fun read, but it didn't blow me out of the water. Read if you like romantic twisted fairy tale.

I hate giving less than 3 stars to a book but here I cans only say that the book was "okay". At half the book I had so many questions and still no answers. I felt that it was long and I kinda became bored despite the interesting questions of technology and the enchanting idea of the monkeys (not saying more to avoid spoilers).
The treads between moral and sentiments was one of the good point of the story that I recognize. But the explanations of what was haunting the characters, what happened to them and what was leading to the event were just "dropped". For example, Lorccan obviously had a trauma. And we wait until the last quarter of the book to suddenly have an insight into one of his nightmares. And Nothing comes after that…
Therefore, I think this book had some good points, yet it did not hold its promise for my entertainment.

First of all, when I started to read it I had not realized it was a retelling and I really do not know how I did not realize it because it is very obvious. This story is a futuristic re-visualization of the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast.

The most part the story is narrated by Alainn, our protagonist; a girl in her twenties who enjoys the outdoors and feels a stranger in her home; It is not easy to have an inventor father and a brother who is responsible for reminding her how little she understands science.

Alainn feels that everything around her is falling apart and she is the only one who really cares: Her father is about to go to jail because of a mysterious man and the order of a robot with AI (Artificial Intelligence ) and human appearance.

The delivery date has been postponed several times and you have an ultimatum, if not delivered the robot will be arrested for fraud. But Rose is not ready, so Alainn is about to do the greatest madness of his life: She''s going to infiltrate in the tower and pretending to be a robot until the Rose's replacement is ready.

Alainn imagined that she would spend his days scrubbing and cooking like a robotic assistant would do but it seems that those are not the plans of his new owner.

What topics are touched in this book that I find interesting? There is Alainn, our gallant Lorccan, Alainn's father, and Shelly, whose character I prefer not to reveal. Each one of them passed, or passes, through something that marked him and leads his actions through the book.

Alainn suffered an episode where she was raped and where she survived at the expense of a memory that now haunts her. Lorccan's childhood was marked by situations that left him with a psychological trauma, physical sequels and that caused him to develop misophobia or severe aversion to bacteria. Alainn's father suffers one of the most common consequences of the loss of a loved one: Isolation and ends up locking himself in his work. And finally, Shelly, who suffers from anxiety problems.

What can I say about love in this book? Definitely the first thing would be that it is a very strange story and that not everyone can seem adorable. It begins to develop while Alainn still pretends to be a robot and that is already strange. There are scenes of intimacy between the protagonists where the subject is a bit explicit and so on, the novel is New Adult, that should not be forgotten.

In my opinion the relationship between both evolves in good terms, it is not love at first sight and it is not something that emerges from one day to another. The closure of Alainn does not last three days. And the scenes between both when it's already developed, just to tell you that I had a lot of butterflies in my stomach, that's what I enjoyed the most, and yes, I must admit that even the risqué.

Middling retelling of Beauty & the Beast for a large part of it, but kicked up a gear at the thrilling end

Thanks to Netgalley and Pikko’s House for giving me this book to review.

Ensnared is a sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast which was interesting but it is predictable and an unlikely story, which I felt needed more world building. Both of the main characters had major mental health issues because of their past and I wish these were addressed in some way and I felt that their relationship was not healthy or good for each other as they enablers for the other and were dependant solely on each other.

Alainn is a likeable character who is loyal, protective and stubborn, and Lorccan is a very mysterious genius. The secondary characters were not as fleshed out as Lorccan and Alainn which meant I did not care much about them.

While I enjoyed Ensnared, it did not grab me as much as I had hoped, and I would recommend it to fans of The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clark.

For such a heavy romance, I really enjoyed this. One of my favorite things in this book are the monkey robots! They are so cute!! It was interesting watching Alainn try to act like an automatron/robot. And she isn't very good but apparently good enough to fool the naive germ-a-phobe Lorcccan. The house is way too smart (and nosy) for anyone's good! I would never want an AI to run my house after this. Especially one that has any free will! I have mixed thoughts to Alainn's whole life-risking bits they tossed in. And the couple random chapters with her brother or boss seemed unnecessary.

First of all, Beauty and the Beast retelling with robots? Yes, please.

To me, this was a very fast and addictive read. Even though I didn't pick it up often, when I did I couldn't put it down. I found Alainn to be a very likable and somewhat realistic character (more realistic than other MCs that we get in fairy tale retellings). Although some of the characters that are later introduced aren't as strong and realistic, it didn't really bother me at all.

Now the plot. I don't know if this is just me but I felt like at times it jumped from one thing to the next one too fast, and in my opinion the book should have ended at around the 70% mark. The last 30% were, although interesting, predictable and cliche. Though I admit I loved that it was more than a love story.

I loved the elements of the Beauty and the Beast and I loved the end result of mixing it with robots, and AI, and the future in general.

I devoured it in two sittings. And if a few things are cleaned up and made clearer, this book could potentially get 5 stars from me.

Ensnared by Rita Stradling was not what I was expecting. It’s the Beauty and the Beast story, retold with AI robots. It’s actually very touching and believable (scarily) with a twist I didn’t see coming. I really wanted to see how it ended and I read it very quickly.

This story for me was predictable and often slow to progress. I love that the author was taking an old story and making it current. I only wish that there had been more progression that occurring early in the story.

This was a DNF for me. I couldn't get into this book at all. The description seemed really interesting, but the style just didn't pull me in.

I've probably read more Beauty and the Beast retellings than I'd like to admit (this is at least the fourth or fifth in recent memory)--but I do like the idea of taking a familiar concept and reworking the details so that despite the basic premise, it feels new and enriching.

Ensnared was provided to me as an ARC via NetGalley, but I also purchased an ebook copy for 99 cents, so my opinions are not affected one way or the other.

Overall, this book strikes me as a rather unconventional, but enjoyable retelling. The magic of the fairytale is swapped out instead for robotics and AI and our characters are given more complex backstories and a lot of the basic details are switched around in a good way. The villain of the tale is also given a much different motivation than I've ever seen, which was refreshing, and we're given more to ponder than just "can you love someone despite their ugliness and flaws?" I give it high marks for its prose, creativity, and original outlook. I very much enjoyed Ensnared.

But, unfortunately, there are a few things I would quarrel with.

This mostly has to do with the author not elaborating/explaining/wrapping up parts of the plot. The blurb, for example, serves to tell us a decent bit of the backstory when in reality a book should be fully comprehensible without a person reading the blurb; this isn't really the case with Ensnared. If I hadn't read it prior to starting, I wouldn't have quite guessed that Alainn's father had accepted money to create an AI robot for Lorccan and that Alainn had a deep mistrust of Rose because these elements are vaguely and barely touched on.

Another issue is the big reveal of Alainn and Lorccan's past experiences--this is a bit poorly worked into the story because only a few small details feed into why they're important and the issues caused as a result are far too easily overcome or they're just kind of not addressed like they ought to be, which is sad because working these in better would have had a deeper emotional pull, make the characters more complex, and overall made the book feel more polished. As it stands, their backstories just kind of seem hazardously thrown in while the focus goes to seeing Alainn and Lorccan together and also focus on the robotics/AI part with Rose.

SPOILERS:
[ So the big reveal for Alainn is that her dad's gambling caused her and her friend to be kidnapped when she was 17 because he owed someone money. Alainn is alluded to have been raped and Cara ends up dead when the car the girls were in is sent over a cliff. The details that allude to Alainn having trauma because of this are essentially that she doesn't like elevators due to nearly dying in a car, she hasn't had relationships because she was assaulted, she dislikes robots because one helped kidnapped her and her friend, and she has felt depressed because she misses Cara and feels lik she played a role in her death. But really, outside of a few small mentions, these things don't really impact the story. She rides elevators begrudgingly, she has very little resistance to being okay with having sex with Lorccan, she doesn't really struggle with depression. We're mostly just told by Rose and Rosebud and Colby that Alainn was ever suicidal/sad.

As for Lorccan, we get told that he's in this tower because he had crazy and highly abusive parents who were convinced he'd die if he left or was exposed to any germs so he's disfigured by his mom to quell to leave, yet then we're told that Lorccan doesn't actually have any poor health problems like he's been led to believe... yet the story just kind of goes "eh, Lorccan will stay in his tower with Alainn and they make do." Like... if you're gonna say that the whole time he was trapped and unhappy in this tower... isn't the point for him to learn to not fear germs and to slowly start making his way to leaving the tower and interacting with people? Like, he has very little growth except that instead of being 1000% antisocial he's just very fixated on Alainn and having her in his tower with him all the time.]
END SPOILERS

So, I will say that I feel this could have been an even better book and that I do take away some stars due to these shocking details about abuse/trauma not having the kind of importance and attention that they ought to have had, since the author decided to include them as major pieces to the character's backstories.

Still, not a bad read! I liked it a lot.

A beauty and the beast retelling is my all time favourite and this book did not disappoint. I liked the futuristic element as well as the love theme throughout.

The concept of an AI has always fascinated me so seeing a book with this running throughout piqued me interest. The characters and story is well written and I am glad that I picked this book to read.

Loved It! I stayed up all night and finished it. Creative story!

In this futuristic sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Alainn Murphy is a young adult daughter tying to keep her genius/scientist father out of prison. He needs more time to finish his very human AI robot that Billionaire/recluse, Lorccan purchased from him. In doing so, Alainn secretly takes the place of the robot in order to give her father more time and keep him from going to jail. Strangely enough, Lorccan doesn't realize that Alainn is not human because the only humans he'd ever been around were his parents. They are both dead and he is alone in his super-techy building/tower because of his fear of germs. He is deathly afraid of 'contamination' and has never left his tower because of this. His face is also scarred and is uncomfortable in anyone seeing his face. You find out why later in the story.

Alainn plays the part of AI robot well enough, and as she spends more time with Lor, feelings start to develop. It was a little quick for me considering she only spent a few weeks with him. Plus, the screaming sounds she hears at night through the vents should have freaked her out more. Just saying. Plus, she sleeps with him knowing he thinks she's a robot. And he thinks she is a robot during this time too! Also, she's not held prisoner by Lor, but by the AI computer that controls his techy-tower. There were also robot monkeys that came out of nowhere. Robot. Monkeys. I'm just going to leave it at that.

There are a lot of details as to what is going on inside and outside the tower. Let's just say it's all very strange yet pertinent to the climax and ending of the story. Definitely a unique and creative twist to the classic tale.

I originally though this was YA, but Alainn is already a working adult and so it's classified as New Adult in Goodreads. Since there are mature scenes in this book, I would only recommend for 18 and up.

*Received a DRC for an honest review.

Enjoyed this retelling though it wasn’t my favorite in that genre

I tried several times to get into this book but it was ultimately a DNF for me. I am truly sorry because I had higher hopes for its potential.

Ensnared was an enjoyable read. I had fun making my way through this novel, and I felt compelled to always keep reading, but I found that after reading it, I was already beginning to forget the story and the characters. It just didn't stick with me enough to be a favorite.

The world building was very well done, and I think was the best part of the novel; however, the plot and characters felt weak, and superficial. They were not fleshed out and the plot seemed to contain so many holes where there could have been more development.

I think this book would be great for younger readers, but as an adult who reads YA, this was just okay. Enjoyable, but didn't stick with me.

An interesting sci-fi take on Beauty and the Beast. I liked this retelling, but I felt something was missing.