Donnelly gas written another delightful tale. Arabella is not a typical sweet young lady. Her parents want to squash her spirit and marry her off. An accident kills her fiance and Arabella blames herself and this starts the curse of 100 years. Looking for love but hopelessly lost. Will the thief break the curse?

Beastly Beauty is a beautifully written and unique retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Arabella has always been different. She's never been one to abide by society's rules. Instead, she is ambitious and passionate and not focused on marriage and appeasing her husband. Unfortunately, her outgoing personality and her desire to see justice served results in her being cursed. Now, a century later, Beau, a small-town thief who is trying to find a way back to his bed-ridden brother, stumbles upon Arabella, her castle, and her curse.

This book truly is beautifully written and easily one of my favorite retellings of a classic tale. I loved both Arabella and Beau. They are well-developed, strong, and independent characters. Yet, they need to trust and work with each other to solve the curse. I loved the creativeness of Arabella's "court". The names of the ladies were very fun. I also really enjoyed the shorter chapters that were either poems or were focused on the various ways to understand fairy tales or our favorite heroes/heroines. Overall, Beastly Beauty was a thoroughly enjoyable creative and unique retelling of a classic. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who loves Beauty and the Beast, retellings, and/or charming fairy tales.

In this Beauty and the Beast retelling the genders are swapped, both characters are outcasts, and it will change how you feel about stereotypical gender norms.

We have two great main characters in this story that both receive brilliantly written character arcs.

First we have Beau - an orphan who joined a group of thieves to support himself and his brother. He uses his charm and good looks to seduce and trick women so he can distract them so the rest of the men can steal their valuables.

Then we have Arabella - she is smart and creative and all her parents want her to do is act more like a lady and marry well. Defying her parents comes at a cost and now she and those she loves are paying the cost.

I love a good retelling and I think the author did a wonderful job with this story. It’s really nice when an author can do a retelling and make it their own. There is a ton of symbolism in this book and a lot of depth to the characters - in the supporting characters as well.

If I’m being totally honest I only requested this book because I bought a bunch of used books last year from someone and there was a Jennifer Donnelly series in it and I hadn’t read anything by her yet and when I saw this book on NetGalley and that it was a retelling I knew I needed to check it out and I’m so glad I did.

Thank you, NetGalley and Scholastic Press for this arc in return for an honest review.

If you've enjoyed any of Donnelly's other fairy tale retellings, this one is another great read. It takes the familiar story of Beauty and the Beast, and doesn't just gender swap the main characters, but adds more unique twists and turns to the story. Like her other fairy tale retellings, this one can get a bit dark

Jennifer Donnelly has such a talent for reimagining fairy tales and making them so much more than you thought possible. Beastly Beauty is another win to go along with Stepsisters and Poisoner.
I loved the gender-flipped beauty and the beast tale. More than anything this story is an allegory. One about our inner demons, our need for love, acceptance, and the grace we need to give ourselves. I also liked how Arabella isn’t cursed for being a horrible person like the beast usually is. I won’t spoil the twists, but they were well done. They were easy to figure out, but I definitely feel like we were meant to figure them out to see how long it took the characters to catch up.
I loved Beau too, plus all the servants in the castle. I definitely got emotional and teared up several times.
This tale is so poignant and beautifully told, and I highly recommend.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the preview. All opinions are my own.

This was okay. The description had me really excited but I feel like it fell flat. The dialogue between any of the characters was almost always really immature. There was a decent twist a little before halfway through, but otherwise it just felt kind of boring.

This book was such a great one. I enjoyed the characters and the plot very much. Thank you for giving me such a good read!

“…the things right in front of you are the hardest ones to see.”

“Beastly Beauty,” by Jennifer Donnelly

This book was a great gender bender Beauty and the Beast Retelling. I love Jennifer Donnelly’s Disney retelling and this one didn’t disappoint. Instead of the traditional loveable beauty and the rude beast this book had two hard to love characters with the “Beauty” character being a thief and the “Beast” character being the prickly princess who wants to be left alone. The pacing was on the slow side, but the interesting world of the castle made up for it. The story was both equally character and plot driven with a lot of character development with a slow burn romance. I liked the world Donnelly set up in the book and loved reading it. 4 out of 5 stars.

-Beauty and the Beast Retelling
-Slow Burn
-Thief MC
-Curse

Thank you for the ARC, Netgalley.

This gender swapped retelling of Beauty and The Beast was phenomenal! Jennifer Donnelly is a remarkable author and her talent definitely is showcased in this book. Arabella's character is smart, and quirky that's basically an outcast to her family. They want her to think and be one way, when she is quite the opposite. Beau's character is a charming thief, and the alliance he and Arabella form is quite intriguing! The witty banter, and chemistry they have is absolutely perfect. I love fairy tale retellings, and I've read quite a lot of them, and this one is without a doubt in my top five of all time! Jennifer Donnelly is incredibly gifted with her stories and I can't wait to see what she has in store for her readers next!

I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is honest, unbiased, and completely my own.

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!