Not your ordinary Beauty and the Beast retelling
Sky Sommers returns with one of her fast-paced-dialog fairy tales in the world that truly reminds me of Storybrook from TV’s “Once Upon a Time.” To Cure a Curse is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will leave you amazed at how the author fills in the speculations others might have around the classic tale.
The Blurb for To Cure a Curse
Belle and Beast. A tale as old as time. A spell that sounds an awful lot like a curse.
What if 16yo Belle went in search of a remedy for the Beast and when she came back he didn’t remember her at all? What if you can’t rely on a true Love’s Kiss (because one party has, quite obviously, forgotten and wants to eat the other party).
How do you break a curse then? Given that the last few petals are about to drop any day now.
Easy. With another curse.
This is a prequel novella to Cinders: Necessary Evil which was written as a thank you to my beta readers to flesh out how Queen Belle and King Thomas met and what ails Ella’s Prince Nicholas. You can read this small ditty as a stand-alone, and it is recommended to lovers of YA quirky (fade to black) romance. Suitable also for younger readers.
And now, the rest of the story…
Yes, I dated myself with that reference, but let’s continue.
At the beginning, I thought this was totally going to be an adult version, which shocked me from Sky. But it quickly returned to the YA fairy tale stories I’ve come to expect from this author.
There is one thing I’d like to see done differently. There were several points where the narrative fast-forwarded. I really wanted to know what happened there. But given that this is a short read (90-ish minutes), I’ll forgive it.
But there is so much goodness in this unique B&B retelling, because it takes away some of the things modern women really don’t like about fairy tales:
- We don’t need a prince to save us. In fact, sometimes the princess should be the one to do the saving. Heck yeah!
- There’s no captive here. Everyone is a willing party.
- The curse isn’t so clear to everyone. No, instead, the curse happens periodically. It’s a spell and inherited. OOhhh… Tell me more, right?
All that being said, Gaston is still there, and he’s still a creep. Gotta love that slimy character too.
Another wonderful installment of Sommers’s Magic Mirrors world. 4/5 stars!
