Wednesday, February 23, 2011

REVIEW: Beastly by Alex Flinn

Synopsis taken from Goodreads: I am a beast.
A beast!
Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright. I am a monster.
You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll, stay this way forever ruined unless I can break the spell.
Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly...beastly.


Beastly is a modern version of the classic fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast", being told from the point of view of The Beast, known as Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is the son of a famous news anchor, and attends an elite school where he is the most popular boy there. In one of his classes, he meets a very ugly, fat girl named Kendra. To mess with her, he invites her to the dance as his date, even though he is taking his girlfriend instead. His girlfriend, Sloan Hagen, loves him only for his looks and when he takes her to the dance she gets upset that he gives her a single white rose, instead of an orchid. At the dance, Kyle ends up giving this rose to the ticket taker, a nobody named "Lindy". 


After the dance, he goes back to Sloan's place and ends up drinking but leaves before Midnight. When he gets home, Kendra is in his room and reveals she is a witch. She puts a spell on Kyle, which turns him ugly, into a beast. He flips out, smashing things. She tells him the only way to break the curse is to fall in love and have a girl kiss him out of love. When his father finds out, he takes him to so many plastic surgeons, but nobody can put him back to the way he looked. His father ships him to Brooklyn, to stay in an old house with the maid, Magda. He hires a tutor for Kyle, a blind man named Will. Over the course of months, Kyle changes his name to Adrian, and becomes best friends with Will and Magda.


Will teaches him how to garden, and they end up planting roses all over the garden, and Kyle/Adrian later builds a greenhouse so he can grow roses all year round. One day, a man breaks into the greenhouse, and when Kyle/Adrian threatens to kill him, he tells him he will give him his daughter in exchange for his life. Kyle/Adrian takes up the offer, because he wants someone to love him and break the spell.


When the man shows up a week later, he finds out that the man's daughter, is Lindy the nobody from the dance at his school. Over the next two years, Kyle/Adrian learns to look past looks and ends up falling in love with Lindy, despite the fact he thinks she could never love him. One night he looks into his magic mirror, and finds out she is being kidnapped, and he runs off to save her. All fairy tales have happy endings, so its pretty obvious what happens now...Beast saves Lindy, Lindy says she loves him, spell is broken with a kiss.




My Thoughts
I was highly disappointed with Beastly, from watching the movie trailer I thought this book would be VERY interesting. But it was the WEIRDEST modern day fairy tale I had EVER read. I also got confused when there were random times, between parts, where the beast was in a chatroom with other fairy tale creatures. I expected a lot more from this book. Overall, it was a good and interesting read, but it just did not live up to what I was expecting.

And the rating is....



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