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TITLE: Beauty and the Werewolf (Five Hundred Kingdoms #6) AUTHOR: Mercedes Lackey PUBLISHER: Luna PUB DATE: Oct 18 2011 |
Summary from Goodreads:
"The eldest daughter is often doomed in fairy tales. But Bella—Isabella Beauchamps, daughter of a wealthy merchant—vows to escape the usual pitfalls.
Anxious to avoid the traditional path, Bella dons a red cloak and ventures into the forbidden forest to consult with "Granny," the local wisewoman. But on the way home she's attacked by a wolf—who turns out to be a cursed nobleman. Secluded in his castle, Bella is torn between her family and this strange man who creates marvelous inventions and makes her laugh—when he isn't howling at the moon.
Bella knows all too well that breaking spells is never easy. But a determined beauty, a wizard (after all, he's only an occasional werewolf) and a little Godmotherly interference might just be able to bring about a happy ending..."
Rating:
I usually start my review with giving a rundown of the book in question but right now I am not in the mood to do just that for Beauty and the Werewolf.
*Sigh* I don’t know why I bothered continuing on reading from this series, even though I know that the last few books from Mercedes Lackey’s Five Hundred Kingdoms haven’t left me satisfied at all. I guess the promise of a fairy tale retelling and mash ups made me drawn to it. Those are after all, my weaknesses.
Beauty and the Werewolf is a retelling story of “Red Riding Hood” and “Beauty and the Beast” combined, in its own way I guess. The protagonist’s name is Bella, who claims to be the clever girl, whose age is beyond marriage years (since this took place in the medieval times, people married young, being twenty and up considers a woman a spinster), and wants nothing more than withstand the fate The Tradition, an unconscious powerful force that entail kingdoms to have fairy tale undertakings, wishes to push on her.
The whole plot would have been amazing, if it wasn’t so damn predictable. It would have been way more interesting if I was given more than watching Bella play housewife. And the love story would have been worth something if there were actually sweet scenes to look forward to. Heck, Bella’s love interest was practically non-existent. Seems to me that she was probably better off having romantic notions with the villain. And speaking of villain, I already knew who he was at the very moment Bella stepped into the beast’s castle.
Everything was just too bland and boring to me. The only exemption to this was the invisible servants, and yet they didn’t even do much.
I don’t know if it’s just me but this series feels like it went from good, to okay then to bad, and this one right here, is the worst. I guess I have to face the fact that some series just aren’t going to get better anymore.
