Book Review: Beastly by Alex Flinn

Beastly by Alex Flinn


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really liked this book!

This book is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It is set in modern times. It has been made into a movie and I believe the movie was released this weekend!
I wasn't really sure what to expect from this book. I mainly picked it up because I knew that I would want to go watch the movie and I always like to read the books before watching the movies. Beauty and the Beast is one of my all time favorite stories. I absolutely ADORE the Disney version that came out while I was a kid.

Basically this book gives you the story of Beauty and the Beast, but you experience it from the Beast's perspective. It goes back to before he was turned. The Beast in this version is a boy named Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is the good-looking, popular, shallow, cruel type guy. He goes to a prestigous school in New York City (I think). He is definitely a superficial guy. He doesn't see past appearances and those who he deems unattractive are an open target for mockery.

One day Kyle messes with the wrong person. An unattractive girl who he decides to play a trick on by inviting to the school dance. He has no intentions of actually going with her though. This act of cruelty ends up costing him big time though... this is what causes him to become the Beast.

You get to experience how this transformation affected him, how he dealt with it, how his family dealt with it. I really liked that part of this book... because it is a part of the Beauty and the Beast story that is not included in the original. Eventually the story catches up to the point that we are familiar with... where the Beast lives in isolatoin and has a young girl come to live with him. Once you reach this point of the story... the plot line does not deviate much from what we are all familiar with.

I really thought the author did a great job of giving us a fresh take on this classic story. I liked it a lot more than I expected to! If you are a fan of Beauty and the Beast then I definitely suggest you give this book a try!

View all my reviews