Jean Patou: A Fashionable Life
Emmanuelle Polle and Francis Hammond
Book
This original, illustrated monograph recounts haute couture designer Jean Patou's charmed life and...
Laugh or Cry: A Jewish Childhood in Nazi Germany, Including the Factual Historic Background: 2015
Book
Sylvia Hurst (nee Fleischer) was fortunate enough to be on one of the last Children's Transports by...
Becoming Agile: How the Seam Approach to Management Builds Adaptability
Christopher G. Worley, Veronique Zardet, Marc Bonnet and Amandine Savall
Book
An in-depth example of The Agility Factor in action Becoming Agile: How the SEAM Approach to...
Happy Pear: Healthy, Easy, Delicious Food to Change Your Life
Book
The No 1 bestselling cookery book in Ireland - for two years running! 'These lovely boys always...
The Escort (Night Series #2)
(unknown)
10.0
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He is everything I’ve ever wanted in a man. And I will do anything to get him. Even if I have to...
male/male 5 stars crime/thriller romance short stories too stinking cute
The Jewish Journey
Book
The Jewish Journey is unique in three respects. First, it is a short, accessible, affordable and...
A Lawless Breed: John Wesley Hardin, Texas Reconstruction, and Violence in the Wild West
Chuck Parsons, Leon C. Metz and Norman Wayne Brown
Book
John Wesley Hardin! His name spread terror in much of Texas in the years following the Civil War as...
The Portrait of a Lady
4.0
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Regarded by many as Henry James's finest work, and a lucid tragedy exploring the distance between...
The Shooting Party
John Sutherland, Ronald Wilks and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
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Anton Chekhov's only full-length novel, this Penguin Classics edition of The Shooting Party is...
Lottie disney bookworm (1056 KP) rated A Curse So Dark and Lonely in Books
Mar 26, 2021
Brigid Kemmerer's retelling of Beauty and the Beast is the first in the Curse breaker series but it is nothing short of brilliant. It possibly took me 5 whole minutes to buy book 2: A Heart So Fierce and Broken once I had finished.
Now you may have gathered that I have read my fair share of retellings but this one has teeth! Split between Washington DC and the kingdom of Emberfall this is simply 480 ish pages of tension, angst and gritty violence.
Elements of ACSDAL mirror the traditional fairytale : enchantress, tick; cursed Prince, tick; true love is the only way to break the curse, (sickening) tick. However, this enchantress sticks around for a bit of torture, the cursed Prince is more of a beast than you expect and if the girl does not fall in love with the Prince? Then he has to start all over again!
If that hasn't got you heading for your local bookshop then Brigid Kemmerer also throws in a female protagonist with cerebral palsy, an enemies to lovers relationship and torn loyalties wherever you turn.
Kemmerer's characters are incredibly well developed and really seem to stay with the reader. Harper manages to be simultaneously vulnerable and kick ass; Grey is stoic and loyal, barely ever showing glimpses of his true heart or personality; and Rhen is the epitomy of a cursed Prince. You don't want to like Rhen sometimes but slowly you find yourself rooting for him and, maybe even falling a little bit in love with him.
This is a non-stop story with a fast-paced plot that leaves you guessing until the very end... Only to have you reeling at the epilogue. This is no fairytale and love doesn't always save the day!
Now everyone leave me alone... I'm reading book 2!