“Dammit, dipshit; why the Beast!”

Beauty and the Beast - May Sage

Aiden was seven feet tall. His skin was eerie white - so white it often seemed somewhere between blue and silver - and his eyes were completely empty, crystal cerulean cold as stone. There wasn’t a hair on him, not even on his eyelids, and he was smooth, luminous. Clearly not human. 

This wasn’t a taxing read, I read it in one go. It’s another ‘twisted fairytale’ version of Beauty and the Beast that ‘brings it up to date’. Sibelle ‘Belle’s’ hacker brother steals from the most notorious casino owner in the land of Jereena who decides his punishment is to either pay him back triple what he owes him, or have his sister as a repayment for the debt. I could cope with all that, just, and the fact that the beast is a hairless seven foot tall silver eyed bloke who owns a high end brothel. This book lost me when he turned out to be a prince who changed his ways for the good of the people. It’s like she really couldn’t decide if this was smut or fairytale. Pick one, because you can’t have both - it doesn’t work!

I quite like Sibelle. She was a member of the revolutionist group (can’t remember what they were called because they were shoe horned in in the last quarter of the book) and an accomplished self-defence teacher. She practised a variety of martial arts and didn’t need to be looked after...admirable. 

Overall, I think the characters were agreeable enough but the story was to choppy for me. There’s lots of sexual tension and then it all goes to pot in the last quarter of the book. The ending didn’t make for a very ‘twisted fairytale’ at all - themes of sex, violence and magic sounds just like the original *insert eye roll here*

5/10 wouldn’t read again or anything else in the series I should imagine.

Thanks for reading 

Rochelle 🌺 xxx

 

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