There is a certain art in taking a beloved childhood movie and rewriting it, making the themes a lot more serious without making it feel like a completely different story altogether!

I think this book has all the charm of the original while also a lot more tension and rounding out the familiar characters!

This book!!! This is a new favorite for sure. Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite princess movie (both animated and live action). This book adds so much extra whimsy to the tale!! 
Tldr: the changes they made added so much to the story, so much fluff and further insight into Belle, The Enchantress, Beast, Mrs. Potts, and Maurice!! Definitely a creepier spin on it! 
~Spoilers after~

-The stove having a drinking problem because of excess cumin 
-Belle and Beast baking together and reading Jack and the Bean stalk!!
- Them both thinking, "What would the other do?" When presented with a situation
- the library being used for the census, we got to actually spend time in there! 
-Her tying Beast up to get answers was so right 
- So much foreshadowing!! 
- Beast strugging with having an animal mind like the servants being paralyzed
- Them being stuck IN the castle!
- Them going into the village!! 
- Mrs. Potts going off at Beast! U tell him!

If you can't tell, I love this retelling! The audiobook narrator did a phenomenal job!! 

I could not put this book down. Braswell's retelling is one of the best ones I've read yet.

Not only does she incorporate the Disney movie so seamlessly that you can practically see the specific scenes playing in front of you and hear the original voice actors speaking the lines, she also gives us an amazing backstory. We see how Belle's parents met and fell in love, the events that led up to the young Prince being cursed, and how Belle goes about breaking it. Braswell jumps back and forth through fairytale history to weave this twisted, enchanting tale As Old as Time.

I've been waiting a while to read this one... 'Beauty and the Beast' retellings are right up there for me alongside 'Hades and Persephone' ones. And as this is the official twist on the tale, I had high hopes! Sadly however, they weren't quite as fulfilled as I'd hoped.

Firstly, I do love the premise that Belle's mother is the Enchantress. It adds a whole other layer to the canon version of the story, but the retelling goes into far more depth, giving you a proper backstory for Maurice and Rosalind. Though it's not hugely detailed, the worldbuilding really enhances the experience, giving explanations and justification for the Enchantress' actions. This makes it so much better than the brief retelling of a Christian parable that the original tale includes with no real context. I enjoyed the focus this whole portion of the story relieved, and the dual tineline shifts between Rosalind and Belle's stories really worked for me.

Unfortunately, I didn't find a lot else to rave about. Apart from the ending, Belle's story broadly follows the canon version of events, so there is very little that jumps out at you. Even the 'big' changes don't feel like they have much if an impact to the overall tale. I think the sweetest bit is Belle trying to teach the Beast to cook, but yeah, there aren't a great number of meaningful revisions, which makes the whole thing fall a bit flat.

Likewise, basically everyone you recognise feels totally out of character. The Beast is just a petulant teenager rather than an ugly soul turned good by the power of love. Gaston is a soft, bumbling idiot more often than not (although he does have an inkling of the mean streak). Even Belle just doesn't chime with her movie counterpart - somehow she's harder, and perhaps more modern feeling. The lack of familiarity made it so much harder sink in and enjoy. I also wasn't hugely impressed with the replacement villain of the piece. It felt a bit pointless when  you already have such a good villain in Gaston that you could use, and while it wasn't hard to follow why things turned out the way they did, it doesn't make for the most thrilling villain arc.

Generally speaking, the writing and layout us quite patchy in places - there are certain a few typos in my copy, and several instruments where a character is experiencing a flashback or memory, but there is nothing to separate it from the main text - you only realise you're looking into their mind when you're half way down the page and it suddenly dawns on you why you're suddenly reading about a different setting! 

This is my third Twisted Tales, and so far they've been average at best. However, the ones I've read have all been by this author. I have two more on my TBR shelf, both by different authors, so I will.give those a go at some point to see if it's a series problem, or an author problem for me.

I had been questioning if I would even enjoy this book, due to putting it off for so long I believed it would seem childish and boring to me. This was not at all the case. The story is so unlike the original, so entirely unique, it's amazingly thought through.