Cover Image: The Beast of Bellevue

The Beast of Bellevue

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Member Reviews

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

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I really enjoyed reading this book. Though the pace was a bit slow it still kept you interested about what would happen next.
I think my main problem is if she had been in the unit since she was 9, how did she know her families credit information for Alec's site? Lol

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I was intrigued by this book because it was a retelling of a classic fairytale. However, there was not much of plot, and the characters were bland! Still, I recommend this for fans of Beastly!

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No longer interested in reading and is not what my brain wants to focus on at the moment. Why does this have be 100 characters long.

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I can honestly say that this was a very hard book to go through. It wasn't what I expected at all. I had to pick it up and put it back a couple of times because the writing was very telling and not showing. It's definitely geared more towards middle grade, I think if the author de-aged the characters a bit it would have been fine. The fact that they were in high school was not believable at all. The idea for Ava to have this compact device to contact the outside world was interesting but was poorly executed. I usually don't say bad things about books, but this book zoned me out more often than not. I wouldn't really recommend it even though it does tie up at the end. There was so many unnecessary plot points, it just wasn't a very good read.

Received from Publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

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Unfortunately did not finish this, just wasn't for me. Interesting idea but couldn't get into the characters.

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A story of a teen romance with a twist, this book wasn't for me. Not saying it's a bad book, just that it wasn't for me. With a synopsis that played up a more fantastical story in general, I thought I would be swept away in the imaginative world and interesting characters, but just wasn't swept away by anything. I felt like I was missing something, like I was standing on the outside of a conversation a parent was having in front of their kids, and that's just not something that's exciting for me. However, it was unique and different from the things that I usually read.

Following a pair of boys who are almost twins, born barely a year apart, and their struggle through their lives as a low income family with a single mom, and a girl named Ava who's been discarded by her very prestigious family and locked away in an asylum for an incident that wasn't her fault, I had hopes for this book to be more than it was. Dylan and Alec are struggling through their life, trying to keep up their social appearances at school and pretend like nothings wrong, that they're not almost out of food every night, but funds are getting low. That's when Dylan has the bright idea to catfish the more gullible girls at their school for money, posing as his brother. What could go wrong?

The story switches perspective so many times, I don't really understand why we needed to see every single person's point of view, in third person. I mean I get it in theory, but the way that it was executed just wasn't interesting for me, and I found it kind of boring. I feel like the mystery was kind of missing because of it, and we got to see very vague descriptions of people who I didn't end up caring about at all, like Ava's parents, a girl named Taylor, a woman named Betty, and even the doctors in charge of watching over Ava. More importantly, I felt like I didn't really ever get to know the characters more than very shallow descriptions of them.

Usually when I read books like these, they get better from the start, but I found this book becoming more boring and less interesting as time went on. I wasn't sucked into the story, I was told what was happening. And that's just not for me. Maybe if I was younger and didn't pay attention to things like that I wouldn't mind, because the story is very unique, but it just wasn't for me at this time in my life. Not to say that it isn't for other people though. I will say that I think the cover is beautiful though, it's really what drew me to the book in the first place before the description.

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I"m typically a fan of retelling fairy tales, especially when the original tale has troubling elements. Retellings are a chance to tell that same story with more modern sensibilities. So I was on board with this book in concept. In execution, though, it was disappointing. I have no problem with turning parts of the story o it's ear. Gender-bending or role swapping. This feels more like someone tossed some elements into a jar, stirred it up, and pasted them back together in random order. The elements are haphazard, the characters vastly underdeveloped.

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A thank you to the publishers and netgalley for this arc in exchange of an honest review.

This one wasn’t for me: the writing feels clumsy and disjointed and like it needs another few rounds of editing. The flow is hard to follow and large parts of it don’t quite make sense. What my university lecturers used to call awkward phrasing, but also just segments that are very confusing.

For me, this meant it couldn’t get into the story. It’s supposed to be YA but lacks depth and weight to it, feeling more like a fanfiction than a novel to me. I think there’s potential here but it needed more edits and another round of developments.

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I’m mixed on this, whereas I kinda enjoyed the story, I feel let down by it too. I felt overall it felt shallow and lacking depth , because of the description you think you are going to get so much more. It felt middle grade, not YA, like reading an awkward pre-teen movie, it had it fun moments but just so much less than it could have been

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I’d like to thank NetGalley for providing me with a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m going to forego my usual “the good, the bad, and the ugly” style of review here since I can’t really give a full review after DNFing this book at 10%. I will, however, give some of my reasons as to why I had to DNF The Beast of Bellevue.

The Beast of Bellevue had a ton of potential as a cisgender-role-reversal Beauty and the Beast retelling. It was willing to incorporate difficult topics such as mental illness, child abuse and neglect, the meaning of beauty, and social isolation into its story. However, its understanding and portrayal of the topics it shows are shallow. For instance: Ava, who is a patient in an asylum (slightly outdated term for a mental health facility with usually negative connotations), is shown to attend psychiatric therapy, which is fine! Pretty okay so far. But the therapy scene involves the therapist sticking to the usual “talk about your feelings” method, and only that method apparently (from the way the scene was written), after this therapist working with Ava for…8 or so years. I know that therapy and its methods are different from one therapist and patient to the other. But I’m not sure what the motivation for the therapist is: was he just getting paid by Ava’s parents to placate Ava and not help her cope with her illness, or was his intent to help Ava? If his intent is to placate and he doesn’t really care for Ava as a patient or as a person, then doing the same method of therapy makes sense. But if his intent was to help, then…won’t therapists/psychiatrists try different methods to help? It may be naive of me to believe it, but I’m just speaking from my experiences. This discrepancy between a character’s intent and the portrayal of psychiatric help as a stereotypical one-dimensional thing turned me off from the book.

Another problem I had was how social media was written. I’m not entirely sure the author spent a lot of time on the internet, to be honest. The plot with Alec was that he pretty much makes a whole-ass website to sell his brother out (not in an explicit way) for his brother’s fangirls online, without his brother’s consent (consent is a whole other issue I’m iffy about), to make money. Firstly: ever heard of Patreon? Instagram? YouTube? Social media ad partnerships??? These sites are a less-convoluted way to make Alec’s brother famous online and gain more fans without the incredulous setup, and avoid the nonconsensual aspect of this setup. Alec building a whole website and have it running in a few days seemed so…far-fetched that it took me out of the story. Not only that, but the whole thing was just so convoluted that it made me question whether the author could make nuanced commentary on social media, if they can’t even integrate actual (or similar, for copyright reasons) real-life social media sites and people’s online behaviors.

Overall, I worried about lack of nuance from a retelling that seemed to promise depth, and didn’t seem to execute hints of it in earlier chapters. The writing also seemed too simplified and too young–not just for me, but for its target audience. In the time of retellings that critique the original, or offer refreshing perspectives, I’m not sure The Beast of Bellevue could be nuanced enough to add new takes on its original counterpart.

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I really enjoyed this book and I liked the writing style. I really hope to pick up more books from this author in the future.

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The cover led me to believe this was going about an isolated girl.

Sadly enough it's more like a teen movie, where nothing feels all that realistic.

The writing was I found was too basic and the character development was outright stated instead of naturally developing.

There were several plots that felt like they shouldn't of been added as they fit the story and like they go nowhere, as well as a lot of coincidences that nobody ever mentions how wild they are.
It's pretty much a beauty and a beast retelling with a slightly teen aimed version. While I do love they beauty and the beast this wasn't for me at all, I do think that a much younger audience might enjoy it, in the 12-14 year old range

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Well. That was not good.

I was excited for the plot itself - a role reversal of Beauty and the Beast where Belle is a patient at Bellevue? Great!

Unfortunately, no. No it was not.

It's pitched as YA but it reads a lot younger. The characters are flat and unlikable, the plot has so many holes, and it honestly doesn't mirror Beauty and the Beast that much. I just don't think you can pitch it as a modern role reversal if there really aren't enough parallels to the original story. I don't remember there being a love triangle, unfeeling parents, a secret relative, or anyone fawning after the Belle's brother. Unless they're trying to make Alec a Gaston character. Which still makes no sense because they're not siblings and they don't get along. I know retellings or books that are inspired by fairytales are allowed some creatine licensing, but I just felt like too many things were different that you can't really pitch it as a Beauty and the Beast story. Feel free to disagree. Just my opinion.

This book was short, but it took me a while to finish because I just wasn't into it and it was mostly due to how unrealistic it was. Girl gets locked up in Bellevue for 9 years because her cake somehow started a fire? What. Girl at Bellevue uses her magic mirror to connect to the internet and tries to find friends online? Why. High school girls signing up for this fake website to hopefully pay their way upward to dating the hot guy (...somehow reminiscent of Scientology)? Dude what is even happening. It's as messy as it sounds.

So. Yeah. That one wasn't for me.

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I received an ARC of THE BEAST OF BELLEVUE by Grace Chen thanks to the publisher through NetGalley.

I loved the way this book was written. It is very unique but the plot was a bit of something old and something new. Gender-swap Beauty and the Beast in Contemporary YA and “idealized teens”. Not sure if another way to phrase that.

Ava, brilliant but lonely, has been locked away. Dylan, morally grey genius with all the cunning, finds her through a money-making scheme. Alec, the perfect high school athlete/model that everyone loves, is unknowingly caught between them.

The book read like an exposition in a movie. Think Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy opening. Or Elizabethtown. Both of which I looove.

Dylan is a fantastic character. Alec and Ava I really didn’t care much about but I loved the interactions they had with Dylan and it sold me on the story.

If you’re looking for a new age beast that screams teenager, this is the book you want to pick up.

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The concept of this book definitely is promising, but it doesn't quite deliver. I found myself struggling to relate to the characters and I felt overall disconnected from the world. The writing was par for the course, but the story felt as though it was moving at a glacial pace. It felt more like a story better told as a short story or novella at most.

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I really wanted to like this book. I want to feel connected to it. I got into thinking the story is about loneliness during teenage years. Making friends and recognising self. But I can't get into the story.It feel boring to read,I don't care about the character or anything happening to them. The plot feel slow. This is one of the book I don't care to finish. I left at 20%.I think it just me. The writing is good but the story does not work for me.

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I received a complimentary eARC of The Beast of Bellevue through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3.5

The Beast of Bellevue is a modern spin on the Beauty and the Beast story but blended with teenage problems in a world full of modern technology. Ava has spent most of her life in a mental health facility and interacts with people her own age online. In some ways, she's the "Beauty" of this situation and in other ways, it feels like she's been written as the "Beast." Her counterpart who also fills both roles in different ways is Dylan, who Ava thinks is actually his handsome older brother Alec. The real Alec and another teen named Taylor, both also POV characters, are dealing with the in-person tribulations of making it through high school with their reputations and popularity intact.

If I'm being completely honest, I wouldn't have spotted the Beauty and the Beast elements if this book hadn't been advertised as a retelling. As mentioned, the "Beauty" and "Beast" roles flip flop (though I get the feeling it was meant to be a straight swap and I wasn't supposed to get a flip-flopping sense,) but the other POV characters truly don't feel like any other traditional role in a Beauty and the Beast story. I also wanted to comment on the expectations set down by the cover. I know covers can change with editions, but the only presented at ARC time is a colourful portrait of Ava (I'm assuming) with a strong manga vibe. That artwork with that title lays down expectations of a misunderstood teenage shifter character and lead me to expect an urban fantasy story with a lot more action in the literal sense.

With those complaints aside, this is a powerfully character-driven story with very empathetic characters, and readers who are all about the characters they hang out with while reading will absolutely love this cast. This book is full of teenage coming of age troubles in a world that's a little less fair and bright than any of them had been promised, and their struggles through these plot points feel so perfectly genuine.

If you're looking for a teenage drama flavoured contemporary fiction with interesting technology, well-written characters, and a nod to Beauty and the Beast, then this is the novel for you! If you're looking for a truer retelling, something more solidly plot-driven, or something with more flowery prose, look elsewhere. Overall this was a fun, quick read.

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ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

You CANNOT do that to me.

You honestly cannot make me feel so many emotions all at once in the spam of just 200 or so pages yet somehow, this book managed to do it! And so well too! I felt everything from happiness, sadness, anger to even empathy towards the characters. All I wanted to do was reach out across the pages and hug each and every one of them, especially Alec. He deserved a hug the most.

The Beast of Bellevue was a suckerpunch of a novel that is sure to make people experience all the feels... as I have just experienced for myself. It follows Ava Pierce, an heiress to a giant technology company that finds herself in an asylum after being abandoned by her parents. Craving friendship, she discovers a website dedicated to making friends and decides to take a wild chance. Via her "Mirror" she begins communicating with Alec Albright, a star soccer player at school. Little does she know that in fact, the Alex she is communicating with isn't the real Alec, it's his brother Dylan who has set up a whole "Make a Friend" website, posing as his brother, to earn money for his struggling family. As Dylan and Ava get closer, the more Ava starts wanting to discover a world away from her "home." The only question is, will she take the chance to fiercely live or remain in the shadows forever?

I honestly loved this book to bits. As you probably know by now, I'm a very character focused reader. If the connection between myself and the characters (whether it be side characters or the main character) is not there then I know I'll hate the book. Luckily, this book delivered on characters, alright. I honestly didn't want to leave them when I turned the last page. We got a lot of backstory for our tormented "Beast" Ava which definitely made me feel sympathetic towards her and we got a lot of it as well with Dylan, Taylor and Alec. All in all, I was very happy but I felt like my favourite characters were Dylan and Alec. I was glad one of them ended up happy.

My only criticism that dropped my review from 5 star to a 4 star was simply because I felt like a few things were rushed a bit. I wished that even more was explored with Alec's past (and no... that's *totally* not because I love Alec to bits and believe he deserves the absolute best) I simply believe there just were so many things that could've been touched on in his character arc. Ugh, it hurts my heart that there is no sequel so I can get all the answers I want.

All in all, I got so many feels from this one but I desperately wanted more!

ACTUAL RATING: 4.2 STARS

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2.5 stars

This was so frustrating for me. I wanted to love this book because Beauty and the beast is one of my favorite fairytales but I just... this wasn't what I was expecting.
There were so many plot holes and things that happened out of nowhere and ugh. I kinda liked Ava most of the time and Alec and Dylan were sometimes entertaining but the actual plot was so messy it didn't let me enjoyed this.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

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