Series: Beast and Belle Series (book 1)

Genre: Erotica

Rating: dnf 28%

Cover: I’m kinda wondering why her dress isn’t yellow, but the cover’s still pretty.

Links: goodreads

Trigger warnings: sexual harassment, maybe more

Description: A Beast’s Belle is a fairy tale retold – echoing the ground-breaking BDSM Beauty books by Anne Rice.

The novel offers a twist on a classic story; Isabel is the daughter of a widowed inventor and tinkerer, but leaves home to join the indentured staff of a manor. Upon arriving, she explores the rigid structure of domestic servitude and discipline in the manor, and eventually grows fascinated with the Master of the house, a feral man with curious proclivities and voracious appetites. Isabel tries to find her way in a new life at the manor, but quickly finds herself bound up with the Master of the house and engrossed in the lifestyle and ritual the manor’s occupants share.

Review: Prepare yourself for a rant.

I want to start with a quote. This quote was part of the (probably) automatically sent email I received after my request to receive this arc on NG was fulfilled.

“If after reading all or part of the book you find the material was very different than you what expected or the genre was not to your liking, the Author would appreciate you not review the book as opposed to posting a review that would not be fair to the Author.”

Like… YOU DO NOT ASK A REVIEWER TO NOT PUBLISH THEIR REVIEW IF IT’S GOING TO BE A “BAD” REVIEWS. Never ever. Nope.
And the wording… like… I expected this ARC to be good, otherwise I would not have requested it. Surprisingly I do not request arcs I hope will be not enjoyable to me. Strange concept, I know. Very strange. But that’s how I roll.

Anyway. Let’s get to the book itself. You may have guessed that I did not like it – dnfing a book is a great indicator for this kind of thing.
First I didn’t enjoy the language. Too many adjectives (I like adjectives, just not… fucking everywhere). And then… the wording. There are some scenes where the mc does something to herself (you know what kind of things I’m talking about) and instead of using ‚her‘ the word ‚the‘ is used. Like she touched the clit and not her clit (not a direct quote, but near enough).

But I could have struggled on if at least the characters were likeable, mainly the MC. Which… she is not.
There is one special scene where I was like „fuck this“. Belle is in the woods, where she often is when she wants to masturbate. She does this a lot – that is not my problem, although those scenes weren’t interesting in the least – which is my problem. That’s not what I’m talking about, though.

As I was saying, she is masturbating. In the woods. The very public and not private property woods. And guess what? She is seen. Oh no. How could he have done that? Way to ignore someones private… wait. She is nowhere private.

To be fair, there is the possibility that he followed her to the public woods (he harasses her at some point and does probably again. Although I wouldn’t know because I didn’t read any further).

But my point remains.

She tries to have her alone time at a public place and some guy who sees her is the villain. That’s not how you can see things like that.

Summing it up… there wasn’t anything that was enjoyable for me and with the e-mail thing… not a happy experience.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review (not too sure in this case if they really wanted an honest review to be honest). Thank you (?) .