I enjoyed this book for what it was, escapist romance. It was a good read, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Beauty and the Beast, or sci-fi romance.

Beauty and the Beast retellings can be found almost anywhere these days with many books recently being either entire retellings or heavily inspired by the classic tale but Ensnared was a bright star in the masses for me as it was described as a "near-future retelling" and the plot is based around a young woman whose father builds robots.

Alainn loves her father but they're blind to what he's creating until it's too late. The robot is modelled in Alainn's image and it supposed to be an employee that can clean and perform other normal functions in the buyer's house but this robot has the opportunity to become a sinister and controlling monster...thankfully for them Alainn can take the robot's place while her father and brother deal with the robot situation at home. I'm not saying this idea makes ANY sense but I was fine to go along with it because it was super easy to read through and I breezed through the book until about 80% into it.

Life in the tower is almost normal except for the fact that it's only inhabitants besides Mr Garbhan are robots that move inconspicuously around Alainn. At first, she spends all day in her room not doing much at all, going to dinner with Mr Garbhan and then back to her room at night. During dinner, they sit at a long table and he is invisible in the dark corner on his side but they still talk. Although he thinks she's a robot so their conversations aren't too wonderful at the start and the only time she gets to eat is at dinner because he thinks it's for effect and she'll clean it out afterwards!

One question that has been left with me was about Mr Garbhan's condition. I understand he knows/believes that his body is too fragile to go into the outside world because of his weak immune system but why does he scream his lungs out in agony every night? Is it just nightmares because of the anger he feels being stuck in his home or is it a result of his condition. I don't think the book ever really addressed this or if it did it was glossed over quickly so I didn't take enough notice of it.

Speaking of Mr Garbhan, he said he didn't want the robot for sexual intentions and I'm sure he wouldn't have done anything with the robot if it had been sent but he and Alainn were quickly drawn to each other and developed a sexual relationship easily and even after they slept together he STILL didn't realise she was human. But I suppose the only reason they did fall in love was definitely because they had their common interests and relationship that only two humans can build.

I liked Rosebud the same way you would uncertainly like HAL 9000 because you know, a robot controlling the entire house you're living doesn't exactly inspire trust but I enjoyed the interactions Alainn had with the robot. Alainn was a fine main character to read through the story from but I think it was less based on character traits and more of the unfolding plot. If anything I can at least commend her for her bravery in agreeing to go and be someone's employee/robot without having any idea of what will happen!

Overall, this was such a good book for a quick sci-fi and romance book (but mostly romance) and it only took me about two hours to read it from start to finish. I think there was a glossed over plot here that could have been more detailed and I dropped off a little around 80% when her brother came in with all of the robot drama because it was a big change from the easy going story up to that point. I think the drama could have been brought in earlier but it was still an entertaining read and a fun way to spend the night.

I'm sorry, I tried.
The original concept intrigued me and I couldn't wait to get into this book.
And at first, it was okay. I mean the world reminded me of the world at the beginning of The Lunar Chronicles (by Marissa Meyer) and I was okay with that.
But then, it got weird and I just couldn't. I mean I could barely feel any connection between the two main characters and there was so much deceit and lies, it creeped me out. And I couldn't shake that feeling. For the rest of the book, I was either rolling my eyes, shaking my head or cringing...

I don't really have anything else to say, I guess this was not for me.

An original retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I've always been into these retellings, thanks

Ensnared is a really cool, futuristic fantasy/ romance novel that can be devoured within a few short hours. We travel with Alainn, who lives in world where robots have replaced the working class of her society and are a big part of life. They drive cars fo you, the have replaced the police and are maintaining buildings. Organs and food as well as microchips are printed instead of created or cooked. It's a really interesting world.

Unfortunately, we don't get to know much about its limitations, how it came to be this way or how most humans cope or work with this situation. Actually, we don't even know whether there are just much less humans on Earth in general because the book doesn't tell us anything about this aspect, except what Alainn's role is in all this.

Her father is a gambling genius who had a big project but couldn't deliver a robot in time. As it is, the AI robot (artificial intelligence) looks exactly like Alainn and so, through a few circumstances the robot arranged, Alainn is sent to the new owner of the AI robot rose instead, until she can be exchanged with a finished and fully functioning AI robot.

But things, as usual, don't go as planned and secret plots are discovered, hearts are broken, traumatizing memories haunt the characters involved and there is even a love story going on.

Reading the blurb, it was not really clear that Ensnared is going to be a love story. I liked it anyway, I think, but it really baffled me. It wasn't the kind of insta-love that makes you want to roll your eyes and stop reading. It was the kind of subtle love affair that starts long before the characters really know what was happening. But, the physical contact was definitely there too quickly in my opinion. SO there is that.

I know I gave this book 3.5 Ribbons, but I honestly don't know how to actually rate it.

As I mentioned, there is not a lot, or rather no world building at all going on and most of what is happening is not being reflected by the main characters. Even though I love reading about new cultures and societies and was therefore really disappointed that the book didn't have a few more pages than 270 to get a few lines of our surrounding in. I was positively surprised by the time and effort the author put in to make this love story realistic, healthy and romantic in a cold world full of metal and wires.

I don't know what it was, maybe the fast-paced plot or the easy writing style but something kept me going and I finished this book on the same day I started it. I would have wished for it to be a little thicker and more detailed, though.

I would recommend this book to everybody who wants to read an unsual love story.

"People always have such a hard time believing that robots could do bad things."

She pulled back to whisper, "Because they're machines, like toasters. I work on them for a living. They can malfunction, but they're not going to hatch up some elaborate extortion plot, that's what humans do."

...

"...You think they're toasters, and maybe they are. But my father gave those tools the ability to form their own personalities and think for themselves. If you give a toaster a choice, it might choose to be a torture device. People just assume that we can control robots and they're safe, but they're not even safe when we can control them."

***
What a marvelous, dark and clever addition to the fairy tale-retelling genre - and to female-protagonist sci-fi... I am a fan of both, although have found both becoming rather overplayed lately, with a concomitant decline in the quality of the stories being put out. Still, I remain (perhaps foolishly) optimistic, since I find that both types of stories, when done well, are really fun and enjoyable for me. This one renewed my faith - and my optimism.

I love the concept of multiple iterations of the Rose AI. In an ever-increasingly digitized world, I seem to be one of only a few holdouts on the "hooray that everything is linked and connected and operates via computer without my doing anything!!" bandwagon... I guess I'm either old enough - or Luddite enough, teehee - to still worry about what will happen if/when the computers take over. Chalk it up to HAL or Robert Heinlein or even the first Transformers or Matrix movies, but I don't trust that the computers will be satisfied with being happy helpers once they're fully independent enough to actually run things... This book took that (I think healthy) fear and played it out on a very clever and engaging level, and the track with the Beauty and the Beast mythology provided a great platform for doing so.

The writing style is easy and enjoyable. The characters are delightfully complex and fully human - even when they're not. And the setting/future world imagined here was altogether plausible (and, accordingly to me, scary). This is a very fun book, and definitely worth the read.

Ensnared is a Beauty & The Beast retelling and boy does it put a new technological twist on the classic fairy tale. Alainn's father develops robots for a living and he created Rose, a prototype that looks exactly like our protagonist Alainn for a high-paying customer. In order to save her father from a prison sentence, she enters into a castle in Rose's place to live under the power of an emotionally and physically scarred recluse, where no other humans are allowed and everything is ruled by technology. 

This book was really creative and had me hooked on the story, imagining it being a real-life situation I was watching play out in front of me. AI is an interesting concept in our society today as it's becoming increasingly advanced so this story line was good hook and didn't feel too far out of the realm of realistic. However, I do have a problem with the romance in this book. Without giving away any spoilers, the romance felt so boring and not actually based on anything. The romance itself was very one-dimensional and I felt disappointed by how this aspect turned out. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I have read it almost nine months before the publication date, so there may be some severe edits in the mean time, but it would be interesting to see the final copy and if it differs from this.

I won't lie, I didn't go into this re-telling of Beauty and the Beast with high expectations. I mean we all know how the story goes; beauty falls for beast, saves him from life of hermit and they live happily ever after. Ensnarled tells the typical story for the first 50% of the book. Sure there are robots and AI involved but for the most part it's very true to the base story we all know so well. But at the 52% point things suddenly get really interesting.

I didn't want to put this book down once I got into the second half. It's a wild science fiction romp where you need to ask yourself if a robot can harm humans... and if it did why would it want to.
That's really the interesting piece to this book is the motivation of what drives our characters (and robots) to do what they do. The culmination of this story wraps itself up nicely and is quite satisfying.

There are sexual scenes in this book. They are quite tastefully described and blissfully brief but without a doubt this is an adult book and not written for teens.

I'm anticipating many reviewers will compare this to Meyer's Cinder. I think that is a poor comparison. The only thing the two have in common is they are fairy tale retellings that involve advanced technology. Otherwise they are completely different in both treatment, set-up and intent.

If you like a cute, but 'how could this ever work' romance, with some science fiction thrown in and discussions around what it truly means to be human than I think you will greatly enjoy this book.

Enjoyed the syfi spin on Beauty and the Beast. Kept me interested throughout! Definitely would read more by this author.

I recieved Ensnared by Rita Stradling as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.

With the new Beauty and the Beast film coming out I thought that a re-telling of the original would be a good read. Ensnared is about Alainn, who lives in a futuristic world where AI and robotics are the everyday norm. The world was far in the future but still pre-dystopian which I thought was different to usual books. Also, I loved the complications of AI and even the mention of legality of them as it's so relevant to the world now as we're building towards them.

Although a retelling, I wasn't fully sure where the book was heading so I was pulled in. The characters were so well developed. Alainn and her family had an interesting dynamic between them, especially with Rose the robot. Rose, as the antagonist was uncontrollable, and therefore insanely creepy. Because of this, I did wonder if it was going to keep the Disneyfied happy ending.

The only issue I had was the lack of world building. We know its in the future where there's robots and AI. We also know, people still go skiing and drive themselves even though there's automated cars. The story is confined to the tower, and Alainn's house and so we dont really see much of the world. I would've enjoyed some more exploration.

If you love retelling fairy tales this book is a must read. A take off of Beauty and the Beast, complete with lonely man living in the tower. I really like the robot ideas.

I love a good retelling of a tale. This book was amazing and a great twist on the original version they went off of. I can't wait to read more from this author

A retelling of Beauty and the Beast, the story arc is predictable, meaning girl falls in love with Beast and vice versa, Rita Stradling's Ensnared kept me guessing nevertheless. The buildup to the final push of love between Alainn, the pretty captive of Lor, takes twists and turns that actually had me wondering if the fated couple would ultimately be together.
What interested me in this book is the fact that it is a futuristic retelling, complete with robots, who are very intelligent. Alainn begins her journey into the fortress of the mysterious, scarred Lor, posing as a robot, Rose, which was created for Lor by Alainn's father.
Keeping up the guise of being inhuman, Alainn soon finds that the plan made for her by the real Rose model is not what she agreed upon, which was to go to Lor in Rose's place for a short time before being switched out for the real robot.
As she falls in love with Lor, pressure mounts for Alainn to maintain her robotic act. Alainn is a brilliant character, she is very creative when questioned about her seemingly human behavior at times. While in the midst of falling in love, Alainn is being manipulated by another robot, the original Rose model, which is in cahoots with the newer model.
Alainn's seemingly idyllic existence with Lor is quickly shattered as she finds herself caught in a race against time to not only save the life of her true love, but to reveal to him her true identity.

I tried to get into this story, I really did. After the first 20 or so pages however I just found I did not want to continue. Could not relate to the characters and the story was just not coming together like I expected

Hi Readers, how are you all doing today? OMG, I LOVED Ensnared! It's a Beauty And The Beast retelling that's set slightly in the future. I didn't love every page but certainly most of it was just how I wanted the story to be!

I read a Advanced Reader Copy of Ensnared. It hasn't gone through it's final editorial stages yet. Ensnared releases on 18th December 2017 (my birthday)!

NOTE: Ensnared is an ADULT retelling of Beauty And The Beast, as there's swearing and sexual themes too!

The main character of Ensnared, Alainn is a ski instructor. In a few scenes we see her on the slopes.

Ensnared is told from 3rd person perspective. It would have been nice, I think to have had it first person from Alainn's perspective, as she's the main "Belle" character but at the same time it was good to see things from an omniscient POV, to judge and try to work out what was going on.

Spoilers below...

The only real difference, storywise with Beauty And The Beast is that there's no Gaston character wanting to marry Belle. The evil character is something else entirely...

Ensnared tells the story of Alainn, a young girl who's father works with machinery. Her brother also does this, as well as a robot called Rose 76GF. Alainn doesn't work with the machinery. It all goes over her head a little.

Rose 76GF is meant to start working for a guy called Lorccan Garbhan soon. She doesn't want to though so she sends Alainn instead. Alainn looks just like Rose 76GF, as she was her model so no one apart from family/friends can tell them apart. This is where the Beauty And The Beast plot lines come not the story. Although, the Beast character, Lorccan is never evil or bitter, he has scars running down his face from his past, and ultimately there's a romance that develops between Alainn and Lorccan. Those two things are basically how we know Lorccan is the beast in this story.

The evil characters are the Rose robots as they rule and sabotage, where they see fit. For example, when Alainn and Lorccan do fall in love the Rosebots do what they can to stop they're love as they want Lorccan forever alone, so he can concentrate on just them.

I don't want to write anything else that happens or that could happen in Ensnared because I enjoyed finding out for myself. It's a story of finding oneself, not listening to others who tell you not to do something and ultimately following your own heart.

While this isn't the final version of Ensnared, it flows really well. I suppose some additions might be made to the overall story or some things might be taken away, as it's still got months until it's release.

I REALLY want a sequel that follows the characters after the events of Ensnared. We do get a peak of what could be happening in the future, although the author has not confirmed if there will be a #2 or not, as of yet.

What I liked about Ensnared:
The writing - there was a quality to the writing style that just made me want to keep reading.
The romance - This was perfectly done, I think. We get Alainn and Lorccan first of all disliking one another, and then slowly falling in love.
I liked how there weren't many characters to focus on. We get maybe 8 characters throughout Ensnared. Most of these are just in a few scenes. Ultimately the story really focuses on Alainn and Lorccan.
Instead of the talking furniture, like in the movie, Alainn sees monkeys doing the work. They can't speak, although they can write. She befriends one of them, Blue. Blue becomes necessary towards the end of the story. I LOVE the sidekicks from Beauty And The Beast so this was different but I enjoyed the different take none the less.

What I didn't like about Ensnared:
Some of the technological talk went over my head. I skipped this and kept on with the Beauty And The Beast storyline, that I know and love and I still understood the story.
It also would have been nice to have had the library scene from Beauty And The Beast between Alainn and Lorccan, or it's equivalent.
We get quite a large chunk of the story without our Beast character. I would have preferred if this had been smaller.

I'm giving Ensnared 4.5 stars because of the points made above. It was a great Beauty And The Beast retelling. I gave the writing the most credit as that's what we look for in good books - good writing! Also the romance, I gave credit for as well.

I can't wait until this is released and I can buy myself a final edited copy.

Sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast - with lots of lots of robots, I'm sold.

I had fun with this one, I inhaled it in one go. I loved Lorccan's tower, it was fascinating and thought out interestingly. The mirroring of Beauty and the Beast was very clear and obvious, but not in a bad way, the world and the characters kept it interesting enough that I still found it fresh even knowing the plot of the original. I also really responded well to Alainn, and I appreciated that she kept a bit of her own identity in the end, she kept her freedom.

The first half of the book I found very strong, the second half alas not so much, so I'm hoping that maybe there might be a bit more editing taking place before it's released in December - not much, but I think it could be tightened. But all in all, it was great! And totally swoon-worthy!

A sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast... Honestly, I had my reservations. But this turned out to be a rather interesting read.
(I did finish it in a day, picking it up every spare moment I had, but that might have been more because of my need to read after a few weeks almost devoid if books than the actual quality of the writing).
As said, it was an interesting read, with at it's core a solid re-interpretation of the fairytale against an AI-robotic-scifi background. But it was also lacking....something.
It felt rushed i some parts, over-elaborate in others. The story has real potential, but just feels like it isn't there quite yet.
I am putting this author on my 'read more of' list, I'm curious to see how her writing will mature in the future.

A Near-Future Retelling of Beauty and the Beast

This idea made me want to read this book as soon as I saw. I was curious about Alien who go to Mr. Garbhan’s (I can't think him as a beast :)) mansion instead of Android – Rose 76GF- I was really curious about how can she go instead of some android and how she won’t be found out by him. For this Rita Stradling have a really convincing explanation.

Story began with Alien went to his mansion to try convince him for giving more time to her father (for finishing android)but of course she couldn't achieve. After that she go to home upset because she believed her father will go to jail because he can’t implement terms of agreement. Even though this neither her father nor her brother care him going to jail. Additionally her brother seems cold and , this make me ask how can she be like this when her family this cold. But with time we saw her family care her and love her.

I loved the Androids’ names being Rose and in this story; her father didn't take Rose but he did promise to do android with the name Rose but he couldn't achieve this :))) That was a nice detail for me. Somehow she found herself in Mr. Garbhan’s mansion and they began to got closer. Firsty writer have a good explanation how she didn't caught that she is human. But when they begin to be intimate I couldn't accept her explanation just that was hard to accept or me. I have a couple of more things that make me asking questions like this but I can’t say without giving spoilers. So, as a general I like how story began and how things become messy and how they handled with the problems but with them when story end I had a feeling that some things wasn't quite right. But I’m happy to read this book and had a good time while reading. With this book had 3 ½ stars from me. With this I don’t feel right to give 3 or 4 stars but in the end it was fun and I’m happy to read this so my choose to give 4 stars :).

Thanks Netgalley for gifting me an ARC copy of Ensnared in exchange for an honest review.

Hmm.. what can I say? I finished this book and felt hanging.. This book absolutely, positively deserves a re-read! 😍😍😍

I AM SO IN LOVE!!!!!😍😍💕💕💕 with the characters, the plot, the story itself! A modern day Beauty and the Beast!!!!!💕

I want more of this kind...The story is kind of a roller coaster of emotions for me, what will happen if Lorc knows, Alainn pretending to be something but not, the feelings they have for each other.. You know, typing these things, I felt there should be more to the story.

I am so happy for them and at the same time curious.. what will happen next.. 😍

I can't say anything more... I am in love with this book. (isn't it obvious from my heart emojis??)

I DEFINITELY recommend this book!!!! Please have your copy NOW! 😉

I love Beauty and the Beast retellings anyway but this one was set in a near future with AI robot, so it was always going to be an interesting take.
It's funny that this time I was actually less drawn in by the romantic aspect than by the world that the author has created - the AI robots are fascinating and it's like being more fascinated by the wardrobe in the Disney version than Belle.

The romance itself was pretty mediocre, their conversations weren't the most interesting and the sex wasn't anything to write home about but I find it hard to care about that when there are robot monkeys in the story.


The writing style flowed beautifully and Alainn was a really likable main character. She's a tough and intelligent young woman who recognises her own hero complex and limitations, she's able to be incredibly compassionate without being pathetically sappy all of the time.

This book had a really interesting take on anxiety and various neuroses - for example, one character with severe anxiety manages to push through everything her brain is screaming at her just to help her friend, which is the most herculean effort to read about.

This book is categorised as a 'new adult' which I think I understand more as a concept after reading this book - it has sex in it, unlike YA titles, but lacks some of the emotional depth you'd find in older fiction. I would like to have read more about Lorcann's past and his parents, as well as Alainn's childhood before the death of her mother and best friend.

My only complaint about this book was that it ended very abruptly - all the loose ends had been tied up and usually there's an extra couple of pages for the happily ever after but this time it was the equivalent of only one page and I was caught unawares - like you've just finished the last bite of a delicious meal and didn't realise in time to savour it.

I highly recommend this book for readers who like their romance books a little different, this story wasn't exclusively about the two main characters getting together and raised a lot of interesting points about AI and morality.