Arabella and the Beast Review

Title: Arabella and the Beast

Author: Rebecca Baldwin

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

ISBN: 0312021631

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Beauty and the Beast has always and will be my favorite romance story.  So, whenever I stumble upon any retelling, I just have to read it.  I bought this book eons ago, but I always ended up bypassing it.  Since I'm determined to deplete my queue of books, I finally gave it its first and last look.

Arabella Ivers was used to the consequences of her alcoholic's father foray into town.  But when her father lost her in a card game, maybe this was Arabella's chance to get away from her father and evil stepmother.  Beast Blackwater needed a bride and she was good as any.  But as their marriage progressed, Arabella's gentle hands were slowly turning his mansion into a home and softening his harden heart.  But there were those who wanted to keep them apart.

Based on the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" with a hint of Cinderella thrown in, "Arabella and the Beast" takes readers to a regency world that had great potential and will ultimately drag you down with its endless details.  Connoisseurs of the Regency era might find the paragraph upon paragraph of descriptions enthralling.  For those seeking a love story (myself included), the verbiage and the lack of romance unfortunately made this book a dry read.  I couldn't see how they could fall in love with each other when they rarely spent any significant time with one another.  And since they rarely talked, lots of misunderstandings became the main driver of the plot.  However, it doesn't mean the story didn't have its high notes.  The beginning will draw you in with an interesting events leading up to their marriage.  But like stop-and-go-traffic, the boring middle had me reading a chapter and stopping.  Reading and stopping.  However belatedly, the ending recaptured the excitement.  It was a shame really.  I did like all the characters.  Their unique personalities gave some color to the story.

There were a few misspellings here and there.  The writing was good but long winded in its description.  This is a very clean story.  The lack of romance was fine with me, but could be an issue for others.  Regency era aficionados will be pleased with the accuracies.  Fairy tale fans?  There were hints of the French version in the first and last couple of chapters.  But other than that, there wasn't many similarities.  All in all, this should be a miss.