Goodreads blub
Sarah has always been on the move. Her mother
hates the cold, so every few months her parents pack their bags and drag her
off after the sun. She's grown up lonely and longing for magic. She doesn't
know that it's magic her parents are running from.
Review
If you’re suffering a surfeit of chocolate after the
Easter weekend, Cat Hellisen’s bittersweet retelling of Beauty and the Beast may be just the thing to combat sugar
overload.
‘That looks like an old book,’ my husband said, and I knew
what he meant. The cover conjures up images of ancient libraries with leather
armchairs and dust-covered shelves. It looks like the kind of book that should
be read by firelight.
The story starts when Sarah’s mother walks out, on a
night when ‘the air was full of ice.’ Sarah’s father, unable to cope, begins to
change, becoming less human, more like a beast. Then he takes Sarah to stay
with her grandparents and we are plunged sharply into the realm of fairytale –
a crumbling tower surrounded by a sinister wood, all ruled over by a woman as
cruel as frostbite. There Sarah learns of the curse that has pursued her family
for generations: a curse that will turn her into a beast if she ever falls in
love.
There’s a tendency towards dark retellings of fairytales
nowadays, and there’s darkness aplenty to find here. But there are also moments
of tremendous beauty, a plot that twists in unexpected places, a compassionate
and determined heroine, and prose that is so gorgeously descriptive that I
found myself stopping and rereading just to savour the way the words are put
together.
If this book was an Easter egg it would be a posh, dark
chocolate one. The literary style and
slowly-unfolding story will appeal more to older middle-grade readers, and, of
course, adults who enjoy a good fairytale.
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