A Brief Summary: Basically a retelling of Beauty and the Beast if you couldn't tell from the name and the recent movie. Kyle/Adrian is the biggest douche bag on the planet. He gets a curse put on him for being so conceited at a school dance and is turned into a beast. Cue the entrance of an average and abused girl (Lindy) and some weird semi kidnapping/hostage situation equals romance, gardening, and love oh my. Oh yes, and all of this is set in a present day high school/Brooklyn.
If I could choose one word to describe this book, it would be "eh." It wasn't breathtakingly amazing. It wasn't so horrible it caused me physical pain to read it. It was a cute, no thinking involved book. However, like all things in life there will be things that certain readers do not like, no matter how good the book and here are a few things that I could have done without:
1. Lindy (an annoying name in itself)really grated my nerves. At first she didn't bother me but the closer I got to the end of the book the more I didn't like her. She was incredibly weak and was portrayed in a very child like way. Especially in her interactions with Kyle/Adrian. We are suppose to think that she's extremely intelligent but we never got to see it.
2. Kyle/Adrian went from having no interest in this girl to falling in love with her basically because he had no other options. We didn't even really get to see it happen. It was another one of those cases where the author just tells you what happens instead of showing it and developing it.
3. Scattered throughout the novel are some chat room images that K/A is participating in to get some support with his transformation. While, I didn't mind these snapshots, at times I found myself more interested in what was happening with SilentMaid than any of the actual characters the book was focused on. Which means, the real plot was somewhat lacking.
4. Kyle/Adrian did some really creepy things. I don't want to spoil too much but I'm just going to say a)alley watching people and b)the dress. Anyone who has read this will probably know which scenes I'm talking about.
Now, just to be fair I'll list a few things I did like:
1. The first part of the book really interested me. I liked seeing K/Andrian be a jerk and get his ass handed to him. I quite enjoyed reading his snotty nosed spoiled kid persona more than his over the top polite and weird prose that no one would ever talk like persona.
2. Something about Will's character (the blind tutor K/A's father hired) made me really like him. And I also liked the twist at the end with the maid.
3. I liked that Lindy didn't start out as drop dead gorgeous. The way I interpreted her later descriptions was that the more you fall in love with someone the more beautiful they appear to you. I know some reviewers thought this was more gorgeous girl in disguise, removal of glasses/hair tie equals=beautiful hottie a la "She's All That." I think through Adrian's own transformations and through falling in love with her he was able to see past her flaws and see the things that made her beautiful. I've seen this in my own life. I found my first boyfriend to be decently cute when I first started dating him, but the more I fell in love with him the more attractive I found him.
Overall, I would recommend this for young adults/teens that want an easy beach read. Definitely don't waste your time on it if you don't have a lot of time to read in the first place. I haven't seen the movie, but I doubt it's much better...although, at least it has some really hot eye candy for some of the movie.
