Beastly Book

So this book has been around for awhile and my sister actually had read it when it first came out and when I asked her how she liked it she said, "It was interesting but kind of cheesy with the internal dialogue. It was eh." But then I saw the movie trailer so of course I had to read the book and see what the deal was. This always happen to me, I think, It's going to be made into a movie? Oh I gotta read that. Then I whip my head around and see I do the same thing like everyone else! Final verdict: I'm definitely more romantic than my sister is.

Kyle Kingsbury seems to have everything and anything you would want. He's good-looking, dad is loaded, and is envied by his peers. With his sense of entitlement he doesn't mind gloating and shining his ego on others, and he might as well crush other people's self-esteem while he's at it. Well karma (or in this case magic) will not let him get away so easily with that. He makes the mistake of blowing a girl off, and pays dearly for that mistake. Kyle gets turned into an actual beast and he has two years from the date to find true love. Someone has to love him, and more importantly he has to love them back. But is there anyone really out there who can love a beast?

No wonder Kendra, the witch who places the curse, gave him two years because Kyle has a lot of things to sort through. He reacts how you would expect, devastated (I would be pretty bummed too, everyone is at least a little vain) and he has to figure out who he is without his looks. He had wrapped up his worth with his appearance and so it comes as quite a shock when that's stripped from him. I loved the side characters of the blind tutor and housekeeper. They keep him from going insane. I enjoyed seeing Kyle's character arc (who later renames himself Adrian), and just how much his perspective shifts. I wish I had copied down the quote, but I really liked the line that Lindy says. The basic gist was that once you know someone you see past their looks. It's like their looks is not what you first see, it's who they are that comes out more. I believe that's true. You do start seeing people for who they are, and not what they look like. Key message in this book.

It was a bit painful to see how "out of touch" Kyle was, but it does portray his desperation well. I rolled my eyes a couple of times when I saw references to Shakespeare, but people who read books love to hear about people who love to read books. Jane Eyre makes quite a presence here as well, and I thought the loose correlation between the two stories was interesting. Despite a bit of cheesiness I thoroughly enjoyed reading how Kyle changes to Adrian, and how beauty is more than skin deep.

Extra note: This has almost nothing to do with the book, but every time I would see the word beastly I would think about how for awhile people would say that to substitute cool or awesome. You know, like say this book was beastly!

And for those of you who didn't know they made a movie of the book!