Beastly (Kendra Chronicles Book 1) (original 2007; udgave 2009)

One of my goals this year is to read some retellings. I first saw Beastly 10 (?) years ago when I was a fan of Alex Pettyfer in "I Am Number Four".
The movie adaptation was good, but this book is kind VERY disappointing. The writing style sounds too, uh, "girly" and whiney. (Doesn't sound like written from a guy's perspective at all.) The pace is too slow and there are lots of repetitive lines.
Even when the Beast took a change of heart about his outlook on appearance at the end, it doesn't change the fact that he is manipulative and selfish, just like his dismissive father. He is also as creepy like Edward Cullen; both of them are fond of watching their love interests sleeping.
(To me, only Kendra is the redeeming factor here.)
I strongly suggest you read another retelling of Beauty and the Beast. ( )

This was a very quick read (literally read in just a few hours) and I've always liked fairy tale based books that are still written in the modern world of today.

Unfortunately, it might be because of how short the book was, it felt like the characters were underdeveloped. It was easy to feel for Kyle/Adrian as the main character, but it still felt like there were parts of him and also the supporting characters that were to be left desired.

You can definitely tell that this is a young adult book and would definitely recommend it to girls in both middle and high school. ( )

http://romancebookie.blogspot.com/2011/03/beastly.html ( )

Fun, modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I am a sucker for fairy tales so this was up my alley. I liked the fact that the Beast was a teen guy and that story was written from his point of view rather than the girl's. I also loved all of the secondary characters. ( )

A good re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, from the point of view of they guy. Kyle Kingsbury is the worst type of athlete/rich boy architype when a witch turns him into a beast. Told both in chaprter form and as excerpts from a chat log where BeastNYC meets with others who have gone throught a transformation, we see the change, watch him struggle to with the love of one girl to break the curse, and become a better person. I seriously wanted to smack the crap out of his shallow, narcissitic father at certain points in the story. Not perfect, I wished that Lindy, she who breaks the spell were better fleshed out, but not bad. Have to see how the movie stacks up. ( )