A Tale of Beauty and The Beast by Melanie Cellier is a Young Adult Fantasy, a retelling as you would quite clearly be able to tell of the fairytale Beauty and The Beast. It is the second book in the Beyond the Four Kingdoms series, which is the sequel series of The Four Kingdoms series, as always I’d recommend you read everything in order, for the best experience, even though it is said that these books can be read as standalone since each is about a different heroine, but the world is the same and there is a timeline.
Princess Sophia has helped her twin sister Lily save the duchy of Marin. But now Sophie faces an even greater threat when she sets out to free the cursed kingdom of Palinar from its beastly prince. Alone, and with danger on every side, Sophie must navigate a magical castle and its even more mysterious master to discover the secret to breaking the curse.
Except the more time she spends with Prince Dominic, the more she starts to question who exactly she’s supposed to be saving. With time running out for the trapped inhabitants, and the reappearance of an old enemy, Sophie may have to choose between saving the kingdom and following her heart.
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I absolutely love Beauty and the Beast, more so the Disney version and the live-action too (I mean it’s got Emma Watson of course, I love it). Melanie’s tale closely followed the original tale, not the Disney version, but made an amazing story with an engaging plot, I liked this one better than the last one, to be honest, It just had more tension somehow, I personally love Grumpy X Sunshine trope so it might have played a part too. It was a quick read, moderately paced overall, and fast at the end.
We see more of Sophie’s sister Lily and Lily’s to-be-groom Jon from
A Dance of Silver and Shadow. Since, I knew the fairytale, I was able to figure out what their relationship trajectory would be (didn’t make it any less cute and absolutely didn’t stop me from grinning like an idiot), the plot and the curse of Palinar though were unexpected.
Let’s talk characters,
Sophie, we first meet in the first book of the Four Kingdoms series, The Princess Companion, as it is visible in that book too she has always had Lily to lean on, and to follow, and now she is on her own not that she regrets her decision to win the Tourney. She was the softer of the two but didn’t tolerate disrespect or bad behavior and could give someone a good talking to (doesn’t matter if you are the prince turned beast of a large kingdom), she’s an avid reader of tales, like me, I too would choose fiction over non-fiction any day. So she was relatable, brave, and kind. I loved her dynamic with the servants so much.
Looks do matter to her, like every human ever, I’ve said it before and will do it again, it is perfectly normal to be attracted to or not attracted to someone, the personalities determine whether the people are going to stay in our life or not, besides the beast was not exactly likable from the start either.
Sophie understood and acknowledged her flaws and apologized when she thought she messed up.
Prince Dominic (loved the name), had beautiful eyes, and he growled; a lot. He has had a hard life, and his character was really interesting, he had trauma, lots of it. He was so sweet at times, and then the grumpy spells when he would only listen to Sophie were so cute (spoiler: he really tested her patience).
Potential Spoilers
I loved the theme of familial trauma, how children pay the price of their parent’s sins. Parents obviously have a very strong and important influence on children and who they grow up to be, but at the end of the day who they become depends on them, whether they want to follow their parent’s footsteps or forge a new and better path. Once kids grow up, assuming they are not isolated, they are exposed to so many new beliefs and views and they have to choose what they want out of all that, want something new or they want everything to go on as it is, or they want to encourage or discourage it, and this choice makes all the difference.
In a nutshell, 5 stars, I loved it, and see myself rereading it.
So, Melanie has a website where she posts extras for her books, and there are two for this book.
Yours,
A Fellow Bookworm
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