I will start this review by saying that I did enjoy 'We are the Beasts.' I'm giving it 3.5 stars, and rounding up to 4 stars.
I liked the main characters, I liked the story, and I liked the mystery of who or what the beast of Gevaudan. I liked that this story was set in a real time and place, and built around a true historical mystery. While the author took a lot of liberties, no one will ever be able to say for sure that things did not take place the way this was written. However, the setting was in the 1760's France - so when I say that the author took a lot of liberties, I am not kidding. The writing felt way too modern, with today's values and mindsets, as opposed to what things would have been like back then.
I did have some issue with the way all men were portrayed in the story. There was only one good guy in the village, and that was because he had lost someone very dear. While a lot of men are real jerks, and while fear can make people act even more like jerks, I found it a bit unbelievable that no man in the village would stand up for what was right.
All that being said, I did like the strength of the girls. I liked that they were portrayed as intelligent and capable. So while I do think that both sides were taken too much to the extreme, I still enjoyed the overall story. I would recommend this read.

This book was amazing!! So many plot twists at just the right times. And the epilogue was hilarious and fit with the story well. Love the idea that the girls were the real beasts, and the beast was a girl herself just trying to protect her cubs.

Thank you to Netgalley for letting me review this book.

We Are the Beasts was super enjoyable. A beast is terrorizing a small French town. But what or WHO is the beast?

The writing was modern and fun, and I really loved the friendship between our main characters. A total delight!

I enjoyed We are the Beasts. The characters were well written and I was rooting for them throughout the whole story. I also wanted to crawl into the pages and give the girls a giant hug. I would recommend this book to my friends!

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story! It’s the perfect historical fiction/horror. I loved Griffis’ take on the Beast of Gévaudan. I couldn’t put this one down and I can’t recommend it enough!

The story was just as gorgeous as that cover!! I enjoyed every second of this book! I will definitely be looking out for more from this author.

This historical fiction novel was a unique take on a part of history that was unfamiliar to me. Although I was aware of the class structure of the time period, the inclusion of the Beast of Gevaudan was different from many other historical fiction novels that I have read. I loved the main character's struggle against the classist and patriarchal society. The impact each had on her life at all times was evident. Even the idea that the beast was present due in part to the need for upper classes to impress others was fascinating. Although some parts were slower than others, the character dynamics kept me coming back for more of the story. Overall, I was very happy with this read.

YEAH I ATE THIS ONE UP! it had all my fabe things trauma within maincharacters diverse characters and a HELLA good story line... I will gladly pick this up on shelves soon!!!

🏚️🕯️🐑Review🐺🦋🩸

Title: We Are The Beast
Author: Gigi Griffis

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫/5

Summary:
Josephine looses her mother and brother to the harsh winter while her father abandons her. Lovingly, her soul mate Clara and her grandmother take her in under their roof. Having survived the winter, new dangers stir in their village. A beast lurks in the woods stealing and killing little girls in the nearing villages. But when a local boy is found dead in a field the village assumes the Beast has come to their home too.
Except Josephine and Clara know better... they know the men in the village are the true darkness and there's more lurking here than just the Beast. They've seen what these men can do in the past but now they're being led by a hungry priest and bigger fears emerge. The girls will have to fight to survive both the dangers in the village and the one lurking in the woods.

Thoughts:
I really enjoyed the vibe of this throughout. There's something about that old timey setting mixed with wild beast lurking about in the woods that is a whole mood. This felt like fall to me. I loved the feral feminine power flexed against the suppressing men and religious figure of the village.
This book really hits the mark of "no good deed goes unpunished" as we follow the girls through chaos.
There were a couple parts that moved a little slow for me. It's also a YA horror read so there's nothing really graphic depicted despite the death occurring.
Overall this is probably one of my favorite YA reads this year.

oh my god!!! i canNOT get enough of it! this story was written so beautifully and so well! i need to read it again and again and again! when it comes out, ill buy a copy for my shelves and i can’t wait to see how well loved it gets from all my time rereading it!

In the 1760’s a supposed beast is terrorizing the Gévaudan Region of France, causing mass hysteria among the people. We are the Beasts take a super interesting approach to this historical incident where they use the idea of the beast to help girls escape abusive house holds and fake their deaths.

This book has an amazing concept and I really wanted to love the book, but the modern phrases and the dialogue’s own confusion about speaking in French took me as the reader out of the story. This is marketed as a a historical fiction/horror, but it wasn’t historical enough in the writing and there wasn’t enough horror to fit the genre.

I do believe for the YA audience the writing can and will be forgiven, but it just took to much away from the story itself for me.

This book was written beautifully. I was hooked from the first page. I love a good pass of folklore and this story just did it for me.
The girls in this book were strong, quirky, smart, and strong. The men in this book were creepy, culty, unforgiving, and icky. I loved the characters & felt they each added something different to this book!
The ending & epilogue were a perfect bow on this story.
I can’t wait to see this book on my shelves!

What an incredible book. Based on historical events, the author added such an incredible touch of feminism to the book. The rage, the hurt, the betrayl. The realizations that Josephine goes through in this. Her character growth. Top notch.

The family created by shared bonds and trauma. That was so touching and beautiful. Even the sheep.

Even though this is a monster story, the beast is not the monster. The girls who ran and fought back are not the mosters. Silence. Turning a blind eye. Letting atrocities continue. Those are the real monsters.

I will never look at sheep in quite the same way, after having read this book … and this review will contain spoilers for the book

What was the Beast of Gévaudan? In this story, the Beast is vengeance, the vengeance of women and girls tired of submitting to the cruel hands of husbands and fathers, brothers and boys who assume they have a right to that which isn’t theirs, to hit and hurt and injure;a priest speaks of hellfire in the pulpit and too many women are dead at the hands of a mysterious ‘beast’ in the forest. So soldiers are sent, soldiers who eat their food, live in their houses and cause almost as much fear as the beast.

And that’s kind of the problem, for me. The set up was amazing, building up the tension between the girls and the town as they watched other women and girls hide bruises, duck their heads, dully repeat lines like “he’s a good father” with dead eyes. Joséphine watches all of this and hatches a plan to protect a young girl from the father who just murdered her brother — his son — in front of her, only to have to save the girl’s older sister, as well. And then another girl, and still there are more women who need help. I was there for all of it, eager to see how these women would finally stand up for themselves, to see them turn the tables on the men who hurt them.

Unfortunately, that’s not quite what happened. The Beast of Gévaudan isn’t female rage; it isn’t the screams of the oppressed rising up. It’s just a beast who happens to be in the forest (though I did appreciate that the author found a reason as to why the beast would be there.) That’s not to say the Beast is badly done, just that it wasn’t what I wanted out of the story. I wanted more catharsis for all of the tension and stress the characters went through; I wanted … well, I wanted something other than what the book gave me.

However, what the book did give me was an appreciation for sheep. The lambs in this book, and the ewes, were charming and full of life and personality and made for excellent light and comic foils during some of the darker moments in the story. There’s also a strong element of sisterhood as Joséphine, Clara, Charlotte, Helene, Eugenie, and Belle — and Louis, the lone boy of the group — find great strength and comfort in one another. The friendships (and the sheep) are the best parts of this book, and if that’s something you enjoy, you should have a good time with this book.

I want to thank Net Galley and the publisher for granting me an advanced reader copy

4/5 stars
Recommended if you like: historical fiction, feminist stories, girls saving girls, real life mysteries

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 5/17 and will be posted to my review blog 6/6 and to Instagram 6/11.

This book is about the harm that befalls women at the hands of their so-called protectors, but it's also about women standing up for each other and it's about community. Joséphine and Clara immediately spring to the aid of a battered six-year-old girl, and the number of people they protect only grows from there. But as the number of people they protect grows, so does the number of people stepping up to protect others, and Joséphine and Clara themselves. That being said, there's definitely a lot of telling going on re: the theme of the book. Particularly at the beginning I felt I was being hit over the head with the moral point of the story, though later on it feels developed in a more natural way. I definitely think my rating would've been stronger if it was all showing, but that first 20% or so really isn't strong in that department and brought me out of the story a little.

I enjoyed seeing the relationships develop in this book. Joséphine and Clara are already best friends teetering on the brink of something more, but their circle grows with the more people they help. Some of the friendships they develop are surprising, some are not quite friendships but alliances with surprising strength to them. The connections felt different and I liked seeing the ways they came together and grew.

This is a historical fiction book and so it has some real people mixed in with the fictional ones. That being said, I enjoyed the way certain things are set up to give nods to other 'beast' stories. For instance, one of the characters is named Belle and one of the (very obnoxious) hunters makes his entrance with a loud gunshot à la Gaston. Likewise, I also got some Little Red Riding Hood vibes at times with Joséphine especially, but I also kind of think Charlotte fits that vibe as well.

The Beast of Gévaudan was a real series of events that took place in France at the time and to this day there's speculation about what the beast roaming the French countryside actually was. National Geographic actually did an article on it in one of their recent History magazines. I wasn't sure what direction Griffis was going to go in for the beast, or if the beast was even going to be fully shown at all or just the aftermath. I was actually kind of wary to see what would happen with the beast, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked the direction Griffis took. Historically it makes a lot of sense, but it also serves very well with the theme of the novel (there's that nice showing) and I really enjoyed seeing how she connected this very real series of events to the fictional story she told in the book.

Joséphine is more than a little reckless when it comes to saving people or things she cares about. Our intro to her in the book is essentially her throwing herself over a cliffside to save one of her baby lambs that wandered off the side. While reckless, it's clear she has a big heart and is more than willing to stick her neck on the line for what she believes in and those she loves. That being said, Joséphine also carries trauma from her childhood and some of that reckless-savior-behavior comes from feeling like she needs to be more than enough to keep her loved ones around. Overcoming that and realizing that other people want to help if she'll open up and let them is one of her biggest struggles in this book. She can also be a bit blind to others at times.

Clara is a good balancing influence to Joséphine's recklessness and provides a more level head for planning. She's a healer and secret-keeper for those of the village, and knows enough of it's goings-on that she's immediately on board with Joséphine, but wants to be more strategic about things. I liked Clara's steadfastness and calmer brand of doing things.

One minor pet peeve: Joséphine says "Not today Satan" within the first two minutes of the book. Please, I am begging authors not to use modern slang and meme culture in historical fiction books, particularly not ones set in the 1760s. In France. Frankly, I don't want modern slang or meme culture in any of my fiction, even fiction set in modern day, because it 1) dates the book and 2) always feels forced to me. But especially don't include it in historical fiction.

Overall this is an entertaining book with a feminist storyline. The characters develop strong relationships with one another, sometimes in surprising places, and that is the core of the story. The 'telling' of the theme is a bit much in the beginning of the story, but it does even out later on.

I am a huge fan of the premise of this book, and I think there is a lot of love about this book! Though, I found that the writing style just wasn't for me. Because of this, I felt a bit thrown off by a couple elements. Though, this is solely because of my personal preference, not a fault of the book at all!

A very good novel. Even though it's labeled YA I enjoyed it very much and kept me interested. Highly recommend.

Absolutely amazing read.. This book I could not put down. The plot the twist were chefs kiss. I’m recommending this book to everyone!

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

The beautiful cover is what first made me request an ARC of this book, and I went into the story fairly blind to what it was about.

If you're a fan of YA fantasy and/or horror, this is a book you will want to read. Set in the late 1700's, Gigi Griffis's latest release is a retelling of a classic (somewhat true) story of the beast of Gevaudan in France. Usually monster stories are about creatures trying to eat children, but this story centered around the idea that a monster isn't an easy thing to define and sometimes the scariest things amongst us can be our salvation. It was a fast paced, thought provoking read.


I truly loved this book and can't wait to buy a copy when it releases. I think my son will really enjoy it, too, and I'm looking forward to being able to discuss it with him.

Thank you NetGalley and Delacorte Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.