I had really high hopes for this book. I love fairytale retellings, especially B&TB. But… there was a beast, and that’s about it. I didn’t really like the writing style and the characters fell flat and short for me.

This book was beautifully done. I love me a good retelling and I loved seeing the script flipped. There were some things that I wish were a little more worked out and explained, but overall I loved it. It is a very good book that helps explain emotions and their place. That epilogue got me.

"Someone wrote you a bad beginning.
And now they want to write the rest.
They want to finish it, to finish you.
Don't let them."

The entire epilogue was beautiful and what I needed to hear ❤️ so thank you for this book. Were there little things that could have been better? Sure. Will this book stay with me? Absolutely.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Rounding this to 3.5/5 stars! I have always wanted to try one of Jennifer Donnelly's fairy-tale retellings(Stepsister has been on my TBR for so long), and I'm thrilled to be able to read her latest one, especially a GENDERBENT BEAUTY AND THE BEAST?

My favorite part was definitely the female protagonist, Arabella, who was not what I expected, nor was her "Beast" persona what I assumed it would be. This retelling was less about literal external beastliness and more about the complexities of human emotions, the good and the bad. For how slow the beginning of the book was, I did end up gradually liking the plot and characters more as the twists were revealed. Beau took some time to grow on me, and although I don't think the insta-love really sold the romance to me, it IS a fairy-tale retelling, so maybe the romance emulates that. The romance surprisingly was on the backburner for me; I appreciated the message of accepting the whole of one's self, not just the parts that seem most appealing.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Sadly this one was not for me. It’s the type of childish YA that really turns me off the genre sometimes. Rather underdeveloped and rushed at points too. I was excited by the concept of a gender bent beauty and the beast but this did not deliver.

I am a sucker for Beauty and the Beast retelling. Make it a dark retelling and I’m hooked. Arabella (such a quit twist on Belle’s name) was so genuine and likeable. She was strong, intelligent and kind. Beau was not what I was expecting and his character kind of threw me off at first. But the plot, the twists, and the chemistry strung together beautifully and made this retelling one for the books. It was full of mystery and yearning. Worth every second.

I jumped on this because it's a fairytale retelling, and it's a gender-bent Beauty and the Beast so think of the potential, but I'm in the minority because I didn't like this at all.

This is marketed as YA, but remove some cursing and you could easily slide this in the MG category, which is great, I love a good MG, but not when it's not meant to be children's lit. The writing and dialogue, even the plot is often far more childish than I was expecting.

For a Beauty and the Beast retelling, we see a shocking lack of the Beast character, Arabella. (A nice nod to “Belle”). And to put it plainly, she's not very Beastly for most of it. It's more of a reverse East of the Sun, West of the Moon situation. Because we hardly see her and the impetus isn't very strong, it's difficult to sympathize with her. Given how the curse shakes out, the reasoning behind it and how to break it, it was incredible to me than we spend so little time with Arabella or in her head. This is her story, and the entire plot revolves around her character development, which doesn't exist by the way, and learning to love herself. The whole climax takes place in about 10 pages and stems from her simply being told/realizing what she needs to do. The whole thing is very symbolic for depression and controlling/living with emotions, but what is more unrealistic than knowing you should embrace certain emotions and tamp down others and instantly being able to do this at the drop of a hat and fixing everything and loving yourself and breaking your curse?? This book could have done something with the idea of your emotions taking over, so to speak, but it utterly failed.

Beau and Arabella hardly interact, and when they do, I neither liked their characters (Arabella herself is a snoozefest, and Beau (outside of his one redeeming quality, his love for his brother) is no better) nor believed their romance. It was fairly instantaneous and has zero buildup so ends up being completely forced, and when we are shown that they do take actions that would be loving towards the other, I'm left confused as to how and why they got to that point. There is no relationship development, and almost no character development either. Which is bad enough in any story, but in a B&B retelling?? Blasphemy. Go to Jail immediately, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

I had read “Poisoned” by Donnelly in 2021 (and forgot almost everything about it now in 2024). I was not a fan of that one, and turns out after reading my review for that one, that she re-used a few plot devices (some of my least favorite, it turns out) in Beastly Beauty. Having not read “Stepsister”, I'm curious if all her fairytale retellings rely on this specific device.

Speaking of this specific device, I don't generally care for it, but maybe that's because I feel like it's not usually very well done. And it especially came across as juvenile in this case, with the almost cartoonish caricatures of these emotions and their silly anagrammed names. I was confused and hoping for an excellent plot twist, turns out I was just overthinking the whole thing. I think really good things could have been done with this overall idea, especially considering just how symbolic the whole curse ended up being, but it was not well-excecuted.

Also, why did the girls (Hope, Love, Faith) stay in corporal form once the curse was broken? Shouldn't all the emotions have reverted? If they were her own emotions, wouldn't it have made more sense for Arabella to be emotionless while they were outside of her? If they were just personifications of emotions, but if they weren't hers, why did they have such control over her and why were they even there? If she cursed herself, but also Despair was the curser, then by rights they are her own emotions outside of her. The logistics of this and how they interact is bonkers. Also, how exactly did her turning into a beast at night even come into play for the curse? It's like there were two separate aspects, the beast curse and the arbitrary hundred years to break it, and the curse of her own emotions.

I expected a lot more but this was just really poorly contrived and written.

"From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Jennifer Donnelly comes a revolutionary, gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will forever change how you think about beauty, power, and what it really means to follow your heart.

What makes a girl "beastly?" Is it having too much ambition? Being too proud? Taking up too much space? Or is it just wanting something, anything, too badly?

That's the problem Arabella faces when she makes her debut in society. Her parents want her to be sweet and compliant so she can marry well, but try as she might, Arabella can't extinguish the fire burning inside her - the source of her deepest wishes, her wildest dreams.

When an attempt to suppress her emotions tragically backfires, a mysterious figure punishes Arabella with a curse, dooming her and everyone she cares about, trapping them in the castle. As the years pass, Arabella abandons hope. The curse is her fault - after all, there's nothing more "beastly" than a girl who expresses her anger - and the only way to break it is to find a boy who loves her for her true self: a cruel task for a girl who's been told she's impossible to love.

When a handsome thief named Beau makes his way into the castle, the captive servants are thrilled, convinced he is the one to break the curse. But Beau - spooked by the castle's strange and forbidding ladies-in-waiting, and by the malevolent presence that stalks its corridors at night - only wants to escape. He learned long ago that love is only an illusion. If Beau and Arabella have any hope of breaking the curse, they must learn to trust their wounded hearts, and realize that the cruelest prisons of all are the ones we build for ourselves."

I've been guilty of building a prison or two for myself.

Beastly Beauty is another Jennifer Donnelly fairytale retelling that does not disappoint. This is the story of a thief looking to redeem himself to get back to his brother but is held hostage at a cursed manor that is roamed by a monster at midnight. The thief, Beau must use his cunning wits to escape by getting to know the lady of the manor, Arabella, who also needs to escape but cannot. Beastly Beauty turns the story of Beauty and the Beast on its head and when you think the curse will be lifted by their work, it turns out it was within the manor the whole time.

Jennifer Donnelly does it again! I truly enjoyed reading this book and can't wait for it to come out so I can snag a copy or two for my classroom. I loved the retelling of Beauty and the Beast in this way and I think that Arabella's court really added to the version of Arabella being the beast. I think this story holds a lot of messages for middle grade students and that they can all grasp something from it.

This may be one of the best Beauty and the Beast retellings I’ve read. This YA fairytale retake gender swaps the roles, and it is so wonderfully done, the storyline so original, it could easily stand as its own conceptualization.

Arabella is a young woman who is cursed to be a beast because she dared to wish for more than what society deemed appropriate for a young lady at that time. After being cursed for so many years, she loses hope that the curse will ever be broken. Enter Beau, a thief who breaks into her castle but then cannot leave. What follows is a great character exploration into Arabella’s character, Beau’s quest to escape, and introduction into a slew of lovable and unlovable characters that reside in the castle.

This is a great book with a great message. Love yourself for who you are, and don’t let anyone else tell you who you should be.

Totally recommend this book if you love fairy tale retellings! Such a great book.

Thank you to the publisher, Scholastic, and NetGalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a fun retelling. It felt slow at times but I enjoyed the suspense and mystery to the story!

This was definitely a different take on beauty and the beast. Beau is a thief. He finds himself indebted to a group of bandits while he’s trying to get back to his sick brother. He gets trapped in a creepy old castle. He desperately tries to find a way out, but is thwarted by a variety of circumstances and magic.

I liked the mystery of this story and the author did a great job of building the suspense. I enjoyed the different relationships of the characters in the castle and the bonds he eventually made with them. However, it moved a little slowly at times and I was anxious to see what would become of them all.

Jennifer Donnelly's retellings are incredible! her mind for crafting unique and brilliant versions of classic tales is absolutely unparalleled. I loved this gender-reversed Beauty and the Beast tale! Although it read a bit younger than a typical YA, novel, I still liked the story and think it's interesting for readers of all ages!

This is going to be a long review full of spoilers so you’ve been warned :)

I really wanted to like this book, I really did. And given the raving reviews for this book, I know I’m in the minority, but there were several things in particular that bothered me.

First off, I had a hard time figuring out who this book was supposed to be marketed for. The age of the main characters (Beau and Arabella) and language used** would suggest Young Adult, but the writing style is very much styled more towards Middle Grade.

**I have absolutely no problem with cursing in books lol. I mention it here simply because you’re more likely to find it in YA than MG.

The writing style leads to my next point. This book has one of the worst cases of Instalove I’ve ever see. Beau spends a few days inside Arabella’s castle trying to escape. That’s all he does in those few days. The only people he really spends time with are the servants. So, other than thinking that Arabella is pretty, why does he immediately think he’s in love with her the moment he spends more than two minutes in her company?? It would’ve been more believable had that happened after their cute little date night, but it doesn’t. They both think they love the other one before that. Without knowing anything about each other or having spent any real time together.

The whole point of everyone trying to find someone Arabella could love, of course, is to break the curse. The problem I have with how the curse is handled it ties into this being a genderbent retelling. I love the idea of a genderbent Beauty and the Beast, but i don’t feel it was handled as well as it could have been due to the nature of the curse and just the plot elements themselves.

The reason the curse is enacted is because Arabella has “attempted to suppress her emotions” (according to the summary). Arabella’s emotions, in the book, are nowhere near as explosive as the summary provided makes it seem. She wants to be an architect but is forced to marry rich instead. Ok….so? Other than the exact moment the curse is put in effect, what makes Arabella different from any other fictional character who’s faced the same predicament?? Instead of getting flashbacks to Arabella’s life (which are few and far between), it would’ve been better to follow more of her life pre-curse to show how much she was suffering. The majority of the book is told from Beau’s POV (with disjointed switches to Arabella’s and a servant’s POVs at random times) which really pulls the reader away from feeling anything for Arabella’s situation.

I also didn’t care for Beau being the one to realize that the curse couldn’t be broken until Arabella learned to love herself. When you change the nature of the curse from learning to love others to learning to love yourself, the book should’ve had more from Arabella’s POV simply because the change is now occurring within her. That makes it more introspective so to give most of the POV to Beau is really a disservice to the idea of changing the genders in the first place. You change the genders and make it more emotional, put more emphasis on Arabella in the book summary….and yet we spend a majority of the book with the male character.

And then the final confrontation between Arabella and her emotions is over super quick because it is literally ten minutes to midnight on the last day of the curse. So Beau tells her the way to beat the curse is to learn to love herself and she does…all in ten minutes.

I did love the idea of turning Arabella’s emotions into actual people but the reveal to the reader is a letdown because of how quickly it’s told to readers. Beau doesn’t believe these women he’s met are emotions come to life and the scene moves on. I feel like more could’ve been done with that—and the final confrontation—when the whole point of the curse is that Arabella doesn’t know how to regulate or control her emotions.

It’s also never truly explained just why Arabella herself caused the curse to happen. There’s no other magic in this book so how did she do that? There were other random things never explained in this book too—so her dad commissions a giant clock built in their castle. Why is Death the clockmaker?? The village surrounding their castle has fallen into ruin but when the curse is reversed and everyone brought back to life, you’re telling me no one from the village ever questions where Arabella and her people came from??

So yeah, this book could’ve been a lot better but I feel like it was relying too much on people’s knowledge of the original fairy tale to really go into the emotions it needed to make it something that would stand out.

Jennifer Donnelly is an auto buy. I always enjoy her books and my students love them. So getting the chance to read this beauty and the beast twist was exciting. Beastly Beauty is what you are hoping it will be with some twists and turns. It was fun and beautifully written. The characters weren't exactly what I expected them to be but maybe that also was part of the draw.

Thank you NetGalley for an arc of Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly

I will read anything that Jennifer Donnelly writes. She is a boss! Beastly Beauty swaps the traditional gender roles of Beauty and the Beast. Donnelly did a fantastic job of recreating this story to reflect the human soul and the ideas that people want to “suck out all the marrow of life” (Thoreau, 1854) and want to be more honest versions of themselves. Yes, there is romance and a curse, but the story has more depth than that—I would argue that the story’s purpose is to encourage self-love. I don’t want to give anything away, but if you are a fan of fairy tale retellings, romance, and redemption stories, this is for you!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scholastic for the ARC! This was a beautiful retelling!

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. I was genuinely impressed by how much I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I've many a retellings of Beauty & the Beast, but this gender-twisted version was SO unique, which I really appreciated reading. It didn't feel like it reused any of the same over-worked material, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

This was an interesting Beauty and the Beast rush against the clock retelling.

I enjoyed Beau’s character and his development from a mere thief to keeper of hearts, savior of matti and castles.

I knew immediately seeing the courts names that they were anagrams for her feelings! I enjoyed trying to solve each lady’s name as it popped up. I do feel that more could have been done with their characters or even been told from their POV.

Death was unexpected and heartbreaking to read. I loved how this character was exposed and explained. The way their presence was detailed in past encounters…. Just *chef’s kiss*.

I have always enjoyed books with riddles so I knew the clockmaker’s riddle was never going to be what it seemed.

There were a few grammatical errors in this book but overall this book spent most of the time focused on character development.
This is my favorite passage from the book:
“Love wasn't for the weak. It took courage to love another human being. It took ferociousness. A baker had told him that. A woman who had lost everything but refused to lose hope.
A woman who was ten times braver than he was. He hadn't heard her words then. He hadn't been ready to. But he was now.“

This one took me awhile to get into it, even with Donnelly's typical gorgeous writing. It is clear to see the slight twists on the classic story of Beauty & the Beast, but it wasn't easy to find much to like about Beau. Being able to see Arabella in a standard, beautiful form before the "midnight curse" also takes away a good bit from the true love element for me.

The secondary characters are where I was particularly left wanting more, but they were just too flat.

Overall: 2 stars (It was fine)

**Thank you to NetGalley & Scholastic, Scholastic Press for the free ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.**

I really enjoyed this retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It's probably one of my favorite retellings of it. I've read another of her books and her writing is really good. I recommend this to anyone who likes fairytale retellings. It also has an underlying meaning of learning to love yourself as you are.
I was lucky enough to get an ARC from Netgalley. These opinions are my own.