Fairytale Reader: Review: Beauty by Robin McKinley

Beauty by Robin McKinley

Publisher: HarperTeen
Format: Paperback
Series: Folktales #1
Pages: 271
Date Finished: 17.05.15
Rating: 2.5/5
Summary: Beauty has never liked her nickname. She is thin and awkward; it is her two sisters who are the beautiful ones. But what she lacks in looks, she can perhaps make up for in courage.

When her father comes home with the tale of an enchanted castle in the forest and the terrible promise he had to make to the Beast who lives there, Beauty knows she must go to the castle, a prisoner of her own free will. Her father protests that he will not let her go, but she answers, "Cannot a Beast be tamed?"

Robin McKinley's beloved telling illuminates the unusual love story of a most unlikely couple, Beauty and the Beast.

Beauty by Robin McKinely reads like a fairytale. It's quite alike The Hobbit in the sense that the narration doesn't feel immensely personal (though I'd say it is more so than The Hobbit), but I don't think it really needs to be. Beauty is a wonderful book, but the reason that I only gave it 2.5 stars is because that method of narration isn't my favourite. Whilst this wasn't the best book for me, I completely understand why a lot of people would choose to give it four or five stars.

If you're familiar with the tale of Beauty and the Beast, there won't be any unique surprises in this book. It follows the fairytale closely, right down to Beauty's merchant family. Although some details were changed to adapt it into book form, for me this just feels like 271 page fairytale rather than retelling. That doesn't bother me at all, but I guess that I was in the mood for a romance more like Cruel Beauty or A Court of Thorns and Roses, rather than the one that was prevalent in this.

“I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.”

Robin McKinley writes beautifully. Her prose was gorgeous to read, and I do think that I'll read more of her fairytale books because, if you didn't already guess, I completely adore fairytales. I own countless anthologies and a lot of my favourite books were retellings. Maybe the reason that this book didn't do it for me was because I was expecting so much, and Beauty is just a simple tale, no matter how wonderfully written it is.

I really liked that Beauty wasn't portrayed as beautiful in the start of the novel, though I'd have liked the Beast to be more beastly in nature, not just appearance (okay yeah, I basically want him to be like Tamlin or Rhysand from ACOTAR. Sue me).

“Cannot a Beast be tamed?”

I enjoyed the characterisation of all the secondary characters, especially Beauty's family. The characterisation in this novel isn't deep, but like I said before this is basically a long fairytale and I don't think that it's the kind of book that warrants it.

Personally, I wanted more of the novel to be set in the Beast's castle as over a hundred pages of it is just set up. Maybe I'm not the intended audience for this, but whilst the romance was lovely it wasn't really romantic. Again, I just wanted something that this book wasn't.

On the whole, I definitely would recommend this if you're in the mood for a captivating fairytale with wonderful prose and a really sweet ending (which, imo, felt a little rushed). If this is the kind of book you want to read, I think it may even warrant a five star rating.