The Beasts Heart by Leife Shallcross, UK Release date 3/5/2018 Spoilers ahead I got a bit carried away with the review! “Let all who look upon you see the nature of the heart beating in your breast” I first read this book back in December as an advanced reader copy, and I fell in love with it straight away, the first paragraph of this book was full of rich language which continues throughout the book.
The story begins through the Beasts eyes of how he became the Beast and how he ended up with a curse by being cruel and heartless, which we then learn that it all stemmed from having a cruel and abusive father, this story unfolds into finding the man and the heart beneath the Beast as he desperately falls in love with his Beauty – Isabeau – who helps him to see through the woes of life. I did find that through him learning to love and care for someone, we see him slip and slide backwards slightly to the cruel man he was before becoming the man who Isabeau could love. We see his cruelty when he traps Isabeau’s father as he takes a rose and thereby forcing Isabeau to a year of imprisonment with him. The Beast himself was written as though he had not had any human interaction for years, which he had not, as seen in the opening few paragraphs as an animal living in the forest, and this made him come across as creepy, misunderstood and extremely childish at times, for example, when she simply called him her friend he wrecked the inside of the castle, this to me seemed as though the Beast slid backwards towards the person he once was as opposed to someone that Isabeau may eventually fall for. To me, the Beast as a character was deeply flawed and as I read further I saw that Isabeau was too, flawed. She may have deeply missed her family and lost herself along the way, but in the year that she was with the Beast, she became a different person altogether, and this as character growth was something I had a pleasure to read, it also made the ending tie up nicely as it seemed that it was not just the Beast that needed to be set free. I enjoyed the scenes we see observed through the mirror by the Beast as it showed that although Isabeau’s family are thoroughly heartbroken by the Beast taking Isabeau away and their dependence on her, they also come into their own and have fuller lives by having to do the chores that were previously done by their little sister, this in itself doesn’t seem as though they have grown as people, but they fall in love, make new friends, become more than the shell that the characters could have been. This to me gave the characters that previously were seen as vapid and shallow as fully rounded characters which I absolutely adored, this is what made the book my favourite retelling of the Beauty and the Beast. I have seen quite a few comparisons to the Disney version, and people being subsequently disappointed that this was not like it, it’s not supposed to be. It is a take from one of the original tweaked versions (circa 1756), which was not meant to be full of kindness and love at first sight – it was dark, full of entrapment, depression, hatred, murder and so on. (See here; http://pitt.edu/~dash/beauty.html) The story has done well to avoid some of the darker themes within the original and Leife has created a book with well-rounded characters, a depth within a character that you never usually see the inside of (hence Beasts Heart) and other characters that you never usually get a chance to see more of. The Beast can be melodramatic at times, but if you can see past that and see that he is trying to change, you enjoy the story a lot more. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I am a huge fan of this writing (in case you couldn’t tell!) so I obviously gave this book 5 stars. Thank you to Hoddor & Stoughton for including me on this blog tour! "I am neither monster nor man—yet I am both. I am the Beast. The day I was cursed to this wretched existence was the day I was saved—although it did not feel so at the time. My redemption sprung from contemptible roots; I am not proud of what I did the day her father happened upon my crumbling, isolated chateau. But if loneliness breeds desperation then I was desperate indeed, and I did what I felt I must. My shameful behaviour was unjustly rewarded. My Isabeau. She opened my eyes, my mind and my heart; she taught me how to be human again. And now I might lose her forever."
4 Comments
5/5/2018 03:01:32 pm
What a lovely, thoughtful review. I love what you made of my Beast. Thanks Charlotte! :)
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5/5/2018 06:30:59 pm
Thank you so much for reading it and writing an incredible book x
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6/5/2018 11:04:37 am
I love your review! This book is one of my absolute favourites, I loved the Beast so much!
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6/5/2018 11:07:02 am
Thank you so much, I was so nervous because of how much I loved the book! I really enjoyed the character and how he was written tbh
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About MeHi I'm Charlotte, I review books for fun and read a lot! Archives
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