When Beauty Dies, What Remains?

Beastly by Alex Flinn

Growing up, my absolute favorite Disney movie was Beauty and the Beast.  I knew every song by heart and even today I own the blu-ray and can sing almost every word 20 years later.  The Disney story gives us background to the Beast and how he became a monster, but primarily the story follows Belle and her journey to the Beast.  Of course with that story being one of my all time favorites, Beastly has been on my to-read list for quite some time.  When the movie came out last year, I was excited and knew that I had to read it before I invested in seeing the movie. 

Set in modern times, Kyle Kingsbury is handsome, rich, popular, had it all in the ninth grade.  He was going to the dance with the hottest girl at their exclusive private school.  He was royalty at his school, with potential to be voted Prince of the dance, he had it all and he knew it.  He knew he could get away with anything that he wanted.  Of course the story picks up when he picked on the wrong outcast and she cast a spell on him, he now has 2 years to meet someone who can love him without his good looks to remove the spell. 

I enjoyed the book to a certain extent.  I thought maybe the book was written in 2000, the very opening scene is a chat room discussion with mythical characters, which I know that no one has joined a chat room, except pervs and 10 year olds in at least 10 years.  When I saw that the copyright date was 2007, I thought, dang, this author did not do her homework.  The interspersed online chatting throughout the book was a poor choice in how to get the story to keep moving. That almost in itself ruined this book for me. 

It was a cute book, but I’m not sure I will read anything by this author again.  This idea was great, it just needed to be written a little better.  I went to Books A Million after reading this book and picked up Cloaked by Alex Flinn, no worries, I put it back on the shelf. 

Have you read Beastly?  What did you think?  What was your favorite Disney movie growing up and would you like to see it turned into a Young Adult movie?  Keep Reading my friends!