Posted on  20/08/2024 14:13:34

My rating: 1.5  out of 5 stars

I've started my romantasy month with big bad wolves! 😉


There are so many fairytale retellings nowadays, each of them trying their best to be 'more original' than their original counterpart.

Some of them manage to capture and even enhance that timeless magic of the classic, while others remain only a pale shadow in comparison.

This book is unfortunately one of the latter.


Draven - the Beast/werewolf- a dark and supposedly mad and sinister lord - is under a Gypsy curse
while

Isabella - the beauty - is under an Egyptian curse
And they are both sitting and reading 'a relatively new novel called Mansfield Park'.
Because she cannot walk you see, as she got a 'rodent bite on the ankle and a nasty bump on her forehead'
Now doesn't anyone else think there may be something not quite right with that?

Leaving that aside, the characters seem inconsistent and the prose lacking.

'My soul has pounded with a sadness I have never known' writes Draven in a letter to Isabella. And despite him being 'dapper-looking' when he goes for a ride, my heart didn't skip a beat for him at all.

Isabella seems to be a darling, but I couldn't connect with her either. Not even when she tried to coax the doe (meaning female rabbit) to stand erect enough so that it could start pushing (to give birth that is - just to make it clear, in case you were thinking of something else).

All in all: this just wasn't for me! :(

Check out this book and more of Marina Myles at www.twitter.com/#!/marinaauthor