BOTS: Beastly

Beastly is, unsurprisingly, a modern retelling of that well-known fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. It was written by Alex Flinn, who I assumed was a man due to certain aspects of her writing. Namely there being a lack of detail that I would typically attribute to the writing of a guy.

Carrying on, it was a fairly decent book overall. Although one problem I had was in hearing about a film based off of the novel currently being in production, and hearing about the casting that they did for it. To be more specific, the image of Vanessa Anne Hudgens as Lindy, who is a pale redhead in the book. It's excessively difficult to continue to imagine the characters in your head when images of celebrities keep creeping into your consciousness.

All that aside, I would say it was a decent read, at best. There were no surprising twists, really, and the climax seemed rushed and hastily thrown together. Contrary to what is written in the Author's Note, I did think that in many ways the story was sugar-coated, and in many ways reads exactly as a Hollywood-produced script would.

Would I recommend this book? I guess I would say to read it if you're into fairy tale adaptations and the like, though I can think of others that accomplish their goal in much more unique ways.