If you know me you know how much I adore the Beauty and the Beast story and I'm a sucker for any retellings. Contemporary is always a hit or miss for me so I was nervous to start this. I feel like this could Have been a really fantastic book but unfortunately it didn't do it for me. I will say I probably wasn't the intended target audience and younger readers who love contemporary stories would love it more then me more than likely.

I feel like this book is just full of stereotypical teen drama and angst that I hate and the characters just seemed shallow, especially Beau. I feel like it encompassed what every older generation think teens are like without actually sitting down and talking with very many and that's what bothered me the most. They just didn't feel like they had a lot of depth despite it being obvious the author was trying for it. It's so unfortunate as well because there's a part of this book that deals with the topic of sexual assault and because of the development of the characters and the rest of the story it just felt wrong and handled poorly and maybe this is entirely just me but it just sat with me wrong.

While I didn't care for Beau much at all and many of the other characters, I did enjoy Bett's character a little more. She was weird and quirky and I felt for her in a way I didn't with the other characters.

The whole thing just felt very unreal and just plain cheesy most of the time. I also feel like it just didn't do the Beauty and the Beast tale justice what so ever which makes me sad. There wasn't a lot that made it a BATB retelling besides these two characters from different social classes kind of falling in love. Obviously there's a lot of changed to be made since it's a modern retelling but still. I think the biggest thing missing was the fact I never believed Bett' role as the Beast. Which of course we know she isn't from the orgional tale but there's a certain joy in retellings and the orgional of slowly revealing the beast's true nature and we never really got that? When we first meet her for real in the book there's a certain niceness that's always there? I don't know if that makes any sense. I also feel that spark and chemistry in the romance was missing. I just didn't see it? I think part of that is it happened to quickly and just felt rushed. I don't know I have conflicting feelings on this book.

Again I do think there's a select few who would enjoy this and I obviously kept through with it so there's a little part of me that enjoyed some aspect of this book but I just felt like it tried too hard to be something it wasn't. I think there's a lot more I can say about this book but I don't want to make this a million miles long so I'll end here.