Mini Reviews - Retelling Binge

 The first half of June was filled with fairytales and fantasy. Also, I just realized that I've read 3 different Beauty and the Beast retellings 😂😂 

    

First up, we have The Lunar Chronicles. I've been wanting to reread this wonderful series since the beginning of the year, but I never had the time since it's pretty long and I wanted to fully enjoy it. This month I did it and it was the best time of my life 😂 Being back into this world brought me great joy and it reminded me why I loved this series (and generally sci-fi retellings) in the first place.

It's one of the most original B&B retellings I've read, not because it's gender-swapped, but because of the main point delivered at the very end. It fits this story so much better than how the OG ended. I'm being intentionally vague because it's sort of a twist revealed at the end.

I guessed early on who the ladies of the court were but it didn't lower the value of the story to me at all. I found this whole concept to be fascinating and enjoyable.

While the pacing is not the greatest (it's quite slow for me), it does have a valid reason. I believe this story focuses more on the character developments and internal battles - which it does very well.

I found all of the characters to be wonderful and the side characters didn't feel like "filler people." There's also no real "villain" just this scary beast and the emotional damage the characters have to overcome 😂😂 Both Beau and Belle were reasonable people and I definitely rooted for them from the start.

I have only 2 small issues with this - a) as I mentioned above, it sometimes gets really slow and b) it feels just a tiny bit like insta-love

 

Next up is The Twisted Pages series which currently has 5 books (I think I saw somewhere the author mentioning a 6th one as well, but I'm not sure). I've only read the first two which are Beauty and the Beast "themed" and I won't read the rest because the main characters are different. Unlike The Lunar Chronicles where I actually loved the whole cast, in this series I'm afraid I don't really like all of them and I'm not exactly motivated to read from their POVs 😅 

While Beastly Beauty is more focused on the inner turmoil of the characters and shows the depth of someone's personality, Of Thorns and Beauty is pure fun and action. Not to say that it doesn't have interesting characters, it does! But it's obviously written more as entertainment and has a heavy focus on banter and romance. Beastly Beauty has a more "serious" point to it and the writing is more complex. Again, both books are amazing in their own way. 

💬 Do you enjoy reading retellings? Or fairytales in general? Have you read any of the above? 💬