I LOVE retellings and I LOVE Beauty & the Beast...so i thought i would LOVE this book. Unfortunately, that was not the case with this book. Besides the subject matter (which was a bit startling)...i just didnt vibe with this retelling.

I'm always up for a retelling but rape triggers are not my forte when reading. I believe there should be a warning on these types of reads. She was so obsessed with this guy and he rapes her. I dont know, it wasnt my favorite of the year. However, I like how she took it and ran, she cursed him but it just didnt make sense to me all up in the end.

This book was not what I was expecting, but at the same time it was exactly what I wanted. Very heavily inspired by the original Villaneuve Beauty and the Beast story, this novel begins before that story and ends somewhat after it. A part of what kept me turning pages so avidly was seeing just how the author was going to resolve this or that plot point into the story that she was telling.

Lucie is a maid within the house of the great chevallier. When she first spies him, she feels as though his beauty is something that is worthy of her serving. However, when he takes advantage of her in the worst way, that admiration turns to self-hate and fear.

Only when Lucie begins to fear that a child may have been made from their coupling does that self-hate turn outwards. Lucie meets with a witch in the fields who says that she will take care of the cruelty of the chevalier.

That's around the time when the conventional Beauty and the Beast narrative starts up. I very much thought of Angela Carter's retellings of this story, but this is a full fleshed novel that offers Beast a happily ever after as himself rather than the handsome prince, and I don't think I've seen another novel quite like that.

Certainly an interesting take on the classic tale, and it did keep me pretty steadily intrigued. Overall, I liked Lucie and Beast, though as a couple they didn't make me feel anything. Lucie could be a bit too revenge-driven, like the revenge was the only thing driving her whole personality for a while. I thought the prose was pretty good, but there were a few phrases and scenes that were odd or just plain silly.

I liked the differences to the original fairytales as laid out in the story, but wished they would have been better explained, especially regarding the Curse and Jean-Loup/Beast. It was very sketchily explained, in a "don't delve too deep" kind of way.

It felt a fair bit longer than it had to, there was a lot of nothing/shoe-leather. Definitely needed some editing.

Overall, interesting and I'd check out more by this author, but I won't be coming back to this one.

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

Well, this was... Hoo boy.

Let me back up. I'm a sucker for a Beauty and the Beast retelling. No matter how close or how far a retelling gets from the source material, I usually rate it an easy five stars because I am just that easy to please.

However, from its clunky prose to its yikes-worthy content, Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge was a book that was hard to swallow from the start. I almost DNF'd it with a one-star rating, and it's a rare occasion for me to not finish a book. In the end, I am glad I stuck with it, so I could get a full picture of what Lisa Jensen intended with her story, but I can still only award two stars, mostly out of pity, because I do not like what was accomplished with this retelling and how it reflects on the original.

Lucie is a maid working on Chevalier Jean-Loop's estate. Jean-Loop is a cruel, childish, selfish master who even seeks to ruin his own family for more riches. In case you can't guess, Jean-Loop is our Beast character. What you probably didn't guess is that very early on in the story, Jean-Loop rapes Lucie, to the point where she nearly commits suicide by drowning. A spoiler that may be, but I feel like a reader should be made aware of it before deciding to plunge into this, especially if that's something they have a low tolerance for.

It's like Jean-Loop is the prince and Gaston combined into one character, and pushed to an extreme. Don't get me wrong: rape happens to women and it's always horrific, but I hate that it was used here at all. Especially after Lucie started to view herself as useless, filthy, and unfit to live after the fact.

Mère Sophie, our enchantress character, saves Lucie and eventually curses Jean-Loop into his beastly form. Lucie decides to stay, wanting to watch Jean-Loop suffer until her vengeance is satisfied, so she is transformed into an enchanted candlestick. Shortly after that, Beast seems to forget everything about being Jean-Loop and what he did to Lucie, and the more traditional Beauty and the Beast tale begins.

This was about where I almost deleted this book off my ebook library. The rape scene was gross enough, but I'm of the strong opinion that if you're going to do dark stuff like that, you need to commit to it 110 percent. You can't just turn back and give the committer of the crime memory loss and paint him as being suddenly sweet and gentle because how disgusting is that?

The truth is, Jensen made Beast and Jean-Loop two different characters with two different consciousnesses entirely. That was almost worse, because why even have rape in the first place? There are plenty of terrible things Jean-Loop could've done to make Lucie hate him without adding rape to the equation, so I am not giving Jensen a pass on this one. This was nothing short of disappointing. I couldn't even like the twist that Beast was the real person and that Jean-Loop was the real curse that needed to be broken all along. It turned Jean-Loop from being a horrible villain to a ridiculous one, and it didn't do any favors for Beast, either; I found him to be terribly boring, and his child-like naiveté was so grating.

Not even Rose, the Beauty character, could save this book. In fact, I hated how self-serving, conniving, and fake-sweet she was. Normally, I love female characters like that--the more Slytherin, the better--but it rang so wrong in this story.

I suppose the reason for the two-star rating is for a few redeemable reasons. I enjoyed Mère Sophie's character as well as how Lucie as a candlestick was designed to illuminate Jean-Loop's crimes and misery. However, it got extremely old how she couldn't move on her own or speak, until she figured out how to do the latter via mental connection. I swear at least 80 percent of this book was description, and that made for an incredibly boring time because the setting stayed largely the same. I suppose some part of me does respect what Jensen tried to do to put a new spin on this tale as old as time, but far too much of it angered, disgusted, bored, or disappointed me.

And, if I'm being really honest, I am pretty dissatisfied with the "Beast stays a Beast and somehow that's a reward for the female character's hardships" ending. Liz Braswell's own Beauty and the Beast retelling did that, and it just didn't do it for me. Which is weird, because normally I'm into the monster thing. Maybe it's the complete break from tradition that I don't like.

I think that this book might have a higher general rating if more people had finished it and seen what the author did with it as a whole, but Jensen gambled way too much on people getting through the rape scene and the hint of romance between rapist and victim that turned a lot of people off; she waited way too long in her narrative to reveal what was actually going on, something that doesn't work when you have the typical romantic hero do something that extreme to a potential female love interest. Either the reveal needed to happen sooner, making this a much different story, or the rape scene should've been nixed for something else.

Of course, this is easy to declare in hindsight as a reader. I've heard Jensen's Captain Hook retelling is much better and more digestible. I'm willing to give her a second chance, but I will do so with a fair amount of trepidation.

I enjoyed the retelling aspect of this story beauty and the beast is my favorite and the atmosphere of the writing was very nice I could picture the scenery in my mind but I had a hard time connecting to the characters the writing style was a little different then I’m use to it ended up taking me a long time to finish.

I have to agree with most other reviewers on this book. I started it a while ago but stopped after a certain scene (rape of the MC) and decided to wait on the reviews to see if I would want to continue. I need those scenes done a certain way or else I just become repulsed and queasy about a book.

Like most bibliophiles the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorites and I am always eager to snatch up the latest retelling, but unfortunately even after trying to get past that early scene, I couldn't find myself finishing or enjoying this book,

DNF.

I read Jensen's Alias Hook a few years back, and that was a way better read for me. We've established from that and Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge that this author knows how to turn her favorite stories into completely different books.

In Beast, the heroine Lucie is turned into a candle--I appreciated the unique perspective, but that's the only positive thing I can say about this one. For one, I was incredibly bored. Since the narrator is, well, an inanimate object, there were times when she (it?) literally just sat on a cupboard, doing nothing. Fucking exciting, right?

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The writing didn't make anything more bearable, either. The dialogue was so cheesy, and if I see someone call the heroine "girl," one more time, I'm going to turn them into candlesticks! That's right, beware!

That's pretty much it for this one. I'm surprised I managed to push myself to read the entire thing. The ending was really predictable, too, so I'm not sure if I can say the read was worth it.

This was a good book. I enjoyed the characters and the storyline. I would recommend it to my friends.

This a retelling as a famous story, a tale as old as time! Sorry couldn’t resist! It follows the character Lucie as she gets a job at the chateau as a maid, and from the day she sees the handsome Chevalier her fate is sealed. This is a great reinterpretation of a classic story, and I really enjoyed it.
Highly recommended! Be my guest and take the time to read this book!

I adore retellings books a lot, but this one just didn’t cut out for me. I stopped reading because not only did it justify rape scene. It also was a very long and dull read. The characters had no basis of a strong connection or love other than supposed curse? I gotta say, I much enjoy the disney version of The Beauty and The Beast not the original one.

This is the absolute worst Beauty and the Beast retelling ever. And yes, I actually took the time to finish to the end. It took me weeks and weeks to slough through this, but I did it, to be able to honestly say that this retelling is garbage.

First, as everyone else goes on about, there is a significant rape scene, and OMG, you're going to sully Belle and the Beast's love story by turning HIM into a Gaston-like character and have him rape a servant? Right away, massive turn off.

About 75% of the book, it seemed like Jean Loup had conveniently forgotten what the hell he did while human, and now under his amnesia he's a sweet guy, which is a very confusing and angry way to read this book because I felt like the evil perpetrator was not getting any kind of punishment for his misdeeds, letting all his cares fall away to amnesia. When the explanation was given, it was too little too late for me.

I just genuinely love and adore the classic Beauty and the Beast tale, and this was an extreme take that did not have any of the magic of the original.

Beast: A Tale of love and revenge
I really did not like this book at all. There was not type of connection with the characters and that rape scene really disturbed me. I really did not understand why there was literally a whole page of the rape scene. Also I do not agree with the character falling in love with the rapist. This was just a terrible read for me.

DNF

After going into this without looking at other reviews, I was caught off guard by the rape scene early on. I didn’t continue after that.

This was an awful retelling of a wonderful story.
I didn’t like the ending as it just seemed a little too perfect, too neat and tidy for my liking and that’s before I even get started on the fact that one of the main characters was a rapist.
The middle of the book became slow and as the plot became odder and odder I found myself feeling bored and uninterested.

At first this intrigued me because the synopsis sounded SO GOOD. Then I started reading and within the first few pages I quickly realized this tale IS old as time and I was not enjoying it anymore. Definitely felt like something was missing. Not sure if it was the writing or the story line, or both, but I couldn't get into this. DNF at 12%. Mostly because that nasty rape scene really threw me off. I'll pass on this retelling.

Allons-y!

Side note about this story before I begin my review: there is a dark scene near the beginning portraying rape. I did not know this before I picked up this book and it completely surprised me.

Erm. I am not entirely sure where to begin this review. I suppose let me start by saying I absolutely love Beauty and the Beast retellings. When I saw this on NetGalley, I absolutely had to take a chance on it. I was so surprised when I was approved for an advanced copy. Though I have heard about NetGalley through friends before, I had never signed up until a couple months ago. Anyway, I really wanted to love this book, but sadly it fell short for so many reasons.

What is the main gist about this Beauty and the Beast retelling? There were some interesting twists here and there, what with seeing the story before the Prince being turned into Beast. And, the story is told through the eyes of a young servant girl, Lucie, who works at the castle. I mean, that’s pretty cool, right? We get to see the Prince as Lucie sees him; a beautiful and charming prince. Sort of. If you know any version of the story, you’ll know the Prince is quite cruel. And this isn’t any different in Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge. Jean-Loup is the biggest jerk in the world. I cannot explain how much I hated him. He was the absolute worst.

The story follows Lucie from when she first joins the castle’s staff through the Prince’s transformation into Beast and all that comes after (I don’t want to spoil this, but it does get interesting). Lucie is the sweetest, but she goes through so much pain and heartache during the story. She goes from sweet maiden to hardened and revenge-seeking barely a quarter of the way through the book. And boy, does she deserve to be as angry as she was. Lucie comes across a witch on the outskirts of the castle groups which begins the downfall of Jean-Loup.

As I mentioned above, Jean-Loup is the most significant pick and the last of the Beaumont lineage. He’s everything you could want to hate in a character. That is honestly all I can say about it. I just hate him. Hmph.

Beast is the opposite of Jean-Loup. He was a sweetheart, and I could not help but root for poor Beast. He loves all that Jean-Loup hated. Beast tends to the rose garden on the castle grounds, and at that moment, I knew he was a good guy. He wanted to help Lucie break the spell. Did I mention that Lucie was caught in the mess with the spell that changed Jean-Loup into Beast? Oops, well, now you know! But I won’t spoil what happened to her.

My favorite part about the book was the uniqueness of the story. I have not read a Beauty and the Beast retelling like this. I liked seeing the story through someone other than Belle’s eyes (who is named Rose in this version). Lucie had a lot of hate in her, and her progression from innocent to hopeless, from hateful to desperate to help was nice to see. And I loved the mystery behind Beast.

Sadly, for the parts that killed me. There were so many run-on sentences. They went on and on, and it drove me insane. I think that a lot of them could be broken up or just cut down. It made many of the chapters long-winded and draining. I was not sure if I would be able to finish the book because it felt exhausting to read. To me, there was too much filler, and I thought some things could have been cut out to get the story to progress a little quicker. Having said that, the story did finally pick up almost halfway through. I was SO excited then. (I just realized that the story might have been slow because there were pages upon pages without dialogue). And I was glad that I stuck around to continue reading it. Things got worse, then better, then worse again, but I finally felt the story moving somewhere. Before I forget, Jean-Loup’s name was constantly missing the hyphen in his name. There were at least a couple times where his name was on the page more than once and it either had the hyphen or it didn’t. Something missed in final edits, I’m sure!

And that is where I will leave you! If you want to know more, please check out the story. :)

Many thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book!


Cheers,
Natalia x

-- I received a free e-review copy of this novel via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. --

This is a really interesting and unique reimagining of Beauty and the Beast - you think you know how the story goes, but it ends up turning into a very different direction. The characters are multi-faceted and morally gray to a certain extent, which makes for a more interesting read.
However, I still ended up feeling pretty meh about the story, as it didn't manage to pull me in enough. I would still recommend this book to people who love romance and fairy tales, even though I don't see it as a 'must-read'.

Lucie becomes a servant at Chateau Beaumont, and at first, it seems like a dream. The dream quickly becomes a nightmare, however, when the lord of the house, Jean-Loup, notices her.

After a brutal assault, Lucie visits a witch. She is determined that Jean-Loup suffer as she has--and nothing seems more perfect for a vain man to have his outsides look like his insides. The witch turns him into a hideous beast. It seems that Lucie is destined to quietly watch his suffering, however, as the witch also turns her into a silver candlestick--impervious to harm, but also silent.

Then, one night a man happens upon the nearly abandoned chateau, and steals a rose. To repay his theft, the Beast demands that the ailing man send his daughter, Rose, to keep him company.

Rose changes Lucie's now gentle Beast in ways she could never have anticipated.

This book takes an interesting approach to the Beauty and the Beast tale, and leaves us wondering which version of the prince was the curse. The book has the feel of a fairytale, but it's definitely not the same one we've all read or watched before.

This book is not for the faint of heart. If you want a happy go lucky fairytale don’t read this. All fairy tales started off as a cruel story. That being said I was able to put aside the Disney story and appreciate this one. It makes you question if everyone can be redeemed no matter what they did.