Bookish and the Beast

A fun, fandom-y and fairly light-hearted contemporary fairytale retelling. Rosie chases a stray dog into what she believes is an empty house -- and discovers she’s trespassing on the current residence of a teenage actor who stars in movies based on some of Rosie’s favourite SF stories.

Which is not the only coincidence, but I thought those and the handling of the characters’ issues was satisfyingly consistent with the optimistic and light-hearted tone of the story. A touch of fantasy rather than reality, if you will.

When I requested this from the library, I didn’t realise that this was part of a series. I’m curious about the other books.

“LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT MY HAIR!” he cries, rushing into the library. He pulls at his show more shoulder-length orange-pop hair. It’s like someone spilled an entire highlighter on his head. [...] “I’m hideous.”
“You’re not hideous.” Mr Rodriguez tries to reason with him, following him into the library. He gives me a questioning look as if to see if yes, I am the perpetrator of this great and terrible sin. Yes, yes I am.
By absolute accident, mind you.
“No one will ever like me,” Vance goes on, his voice muffled by his hands.
“I like you,” his guardian says patiently.
“What’s the point if I can’t be beautiful?”
I squint at him. “Are you quoting Howl’s Moving Castle?” show less

I really enjoy the Once Upon a Con series, and this installment was no exception. I love the nods to all things geeky, I love the quotes from movies, I love the fairy tale retellings. This one, though, was even better than I had expected.

I guess I just really appreciate a good redemption story. I love the stories where a character can find internal strength she didn't know she had. I love stories with a really good doggo. But more than that, these characters felt more real to me than the previous two books in the series. Those were enjoyable and I liked the characters well enough. But these characters—not just Rosie and Vance, but also Quinn and Annie and Space Dad and Elias—it seems like I know them.

Confession: I love ❤❤❤ fairytale retellings, especially Beauty and the Beast. So Ashley Poston combining her cosplay/sci-fi nerdy awesome world with one of my favorite genres? Yes, please! Rosie Thorne is struggling. Daughter of the town librarian, she’s still grieving over having lost her mom, who was a huge sci-fi fan like Rosie. When she meets a masked stranger at a ball and they hit it off, she thinks it was one magical night that will never mean anything. Vance is a Hollywood star, the latest villain cast in Starfield. When Rosie wanders into the house he’s staying in months later, searching for a lost dog, she doesn’t recognize him. The romance between these two is the perfect slow burn

Rosie Thorne is a small-town girl (Livin’ in a lonely world?) who is mourning the loss of her mother and trying to navigate the last year of high school with the help of her father and her best friends, Anna and Quinn. When she finds a lost dog as she’s driving home from work one evening, she stumbles into the local “castle.”

Vance Reigns is a young “bad boy” actor. After one too many tabloid headlines, his stepfather, a movie producer, exiles him to the castle that Natalia Ford, the director of Vance’s latest movie, owns. He and Rosie meet when Rosie is trying to make sure his dog gets home. Sparks fly between them but Vance believes Rosie could never be interested in someone like him.

These books! I keep saying this but I show more grin until my face hurts while I’m reading them! Even when the story takes a troubled turn, I smile in anticipation of the eventual Happily Ever After.

First things first though. I’m knocking this one back to 4.5 stars. One of the things that Ashley Poston does so freaking well, and that I love her for, is inclusion and representation. People are people! Quinn, one of Rosie’s best friends, is non-binary and chooses the pronouns they/them. No big deal! There are gay and bisexual characters and it makes my heart so happy! But then she takes these casual swipes at the band geeks! What?!? It’s a small thing, really, but when one of the things I love best is that all the characters are accepted for who they are in all their esoteric enthusiasms, writing that “there’s a weird smell that I can only assume is coming from the marching band” just hurts my feelings and disappoints me. There were one or two other instances. I was obviously a band geek in high school. I have lifelong friendships from my time in the band. Band members are generally good kids making good grades who probably make up a significant portion of any fandom. We get a lot of grief in high school and pop culture; we don’t need it in a book that otherwise empowers geeks too.

There were also some continuity errors and typos, but the book is so charming and magical that I just don’t care.

On to the great things!

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is my favorite animated movie so this was almost guaranteed to be a five-star read for me–if it was done well. There’s potential for huge disappointment based on that movie love too. Poston knocked it out of the park. All of the fairy tale elements were present in this book in ways that largely made sense in the modern world. The library, the “beast,” Mrs. Potts, the library…. Did I mention the library? Rosie’s descriptions of the library made my bookish heart glow with recognition.

“But there is so much more in those words than just loving books. I love the smell of them. I love the way their bindings look pressed together on a shelf. I love the feel of pages buzzing through my fingers. I love big books and small books. I love words and how they’re strung together, and most of all, I love the stories. I love how books are not really just books at all, but doorways. They are portals into places I’ve never been and people I’ll never be, and in them I have lived a thousand lives and seen a thousand different worlds. In them I can be a princess or a knight of valor or a villain—I can be coveted, I can conquer on evils, I can defeat Dark Lords and destroy the One Ring and unite a Federation on the brink of collapse.”

and

“Nothing quite takes my breath away like the library every time I walk in. It’s the slant of the sun coming through the two large windows. It’s the way the light flickers off the motes of dust that drift through the room. It’s the smell of old paperbacks, filling every shelf like hundreds of secret stories from a galaxy far, far away, beckoning me to settle into every page, explore every planet, fall in love over and over again with Carmindor and Amara and Euci and Zorine and, yes, even Ambrose Sond.”

She has described the feelings of every reader in any bookish space so well!

Another thing that I loved is that Rosie’s friendships are so important to her. In romantic books, it’s easy to focus only on the couple. But Annie and Quinn are Rosie’s ride-or-dies. She tells them all her hopes and dreams and secrets. They actually keep her secrets! Annie and Rosie fully support Quinn’s efforts to be a non-binary Homecoming King. When Rosie is upset, they cheer her up in a scene that feels vaguely Romeo-and-Juliet-ish as they boom her favorite song at her balcony. They change their own plans when she needs them. Rosie says, “[The] best memories I’ve ever had are with my best friends. Like a good bra, they lift me up to stand tall.”

But the point of Beauty and the Beast is the romance and that feels well done too. Vance’s “friends” in LA have sold him out and used him so many times that he has major trust issues, causing him to lash out at anyone who gets too close. Rosie sees who he is under all the bluster but he frustrates her when he continually pushes her away. Their constant push and pull felt real enough to me, allowing that this is a fairy tale retelling. Vance gets a line that makes my heart flutter, “I want to tell her that she is the kind of story I have been looking for, and I want to be a part of it. So, so badly.” What a perfect pickup line to use on a bibliophile!

Readers who believe in fairy tales and happily ever after should absolutely read this loose series and this book in particular. It will leave you beaming with happiness. show less

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher (Quirk Books) in exchange for an honest review.

I am such a huge fan of this series so I was excited to read this, especially since Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale. I ended up enjoying this a lot!

So first off, there are a lot of references to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Like on page 37 there is a reference to “the great wide somewhere” and on page 224 there is talk of “Magic spells. Daring sword fights. A prince in disguise.” As a Beauty and the Beast super fan I had a ton of fun picking up all these little Easter eggs.

As for the characters, the author always writes the most interesting and dynamic ones. Both the main and supporting characters were so show more lovable and fleshed out. My favorite was Rosie’s dad, aka Space Dad. He seemed like the coolest dad ever.

The writing style as usual was perfect for the genre. It was a good amount of geeky mixed in with an easy to read prose.

This books also had amazing descriptions dedicated to the love of books. For example, Rosie states, “But there is so much more in those words than just loving books. I love the smell of them. I love the way their bindings look pressed together on a shelf…They are portals into places I’ve never been and people I’ll never be, and in them I have lived a thousand lives and seen a thousand different worlds” (pg. 39). I couldn’t agree more.

I also would like to point out something the author put in the acknowledgments that I absolutely loved. She writes, “I wrote this book for me. So, if you didn’t really enjoy this book, that’s okay! You’ll find one that you love” (pg. 284). I thought this was a great reminder to readers that it is okay if you didn’t like a book and that authors can write what they want to write (on the assumption for course that it is not offensive, problematic etc.)

Lastly, I did feel like there was something missing in this book compared to the other ones in the series. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was. It could be that this book is significantly shorter than the other two and I wanted a bit more.

Overall, if you are a fan of this series (or books or Beauty and the Beast), you’ll probably like this one! show less

3.5

This was probably my least favorite in the series so far but only because it could have been so much better. There were just too many things that didn’t add up that made this super cute romcom more confusing than it needed to be. It also was not even really a retelling. There’s hardly anything tying it to the beauty and the beast other than some rose bushes, a town douchbag, and a library.

Kinda basic. Kinda predictable. Cute, if slightly infuriating, main characters (#communication people!!). Acceptably quirky supporting cast. Peppered with the kind of tropes we wish we didn’t love but honestly who are we kidding, you know?
Overall, an adequately cute comfort read. Like a rom-com you’d watch once and enjoy, and occasionally return to as a mood-booster, even though it’s not your favorite rom-com ever.. Am I making sense yet??