Beastly by Alex Flinn

Published in 2007 by HarperTeen
2 Stars

Goodreads Review
I am a beast.

A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright--a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll stay this way forever--ruined--unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly.

Review:  I picked up a copy of Beastly because I surprisingly enjoyed the movie (starring Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer) and I wanted to see what the novel was all about.  I thought Beastly was ok, and was actually enjoying it despite the incredibly cheesy writing and the fact that Beastly sticks closely to the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast and not the classic fairytale.    However, it all went downhill when I got to the ending.

The writing in Beastly is just very safe.  While this is set in "modern day" New York (I use the term modern lightly because the pop culture and technology in Beastly is already vastly dated) Beastly doesn't do much else to deviate from the original fairy tale.  There are no risks or interesting interpretations of the moral of the story, it's the Disney movie in New York.  No more no less.

What really bothered me was how Beastly seemed to miss the whole message of the original fairytale.  The whole point of Beauty and the Beast is to show that inner beauty is more important than outer, but at the end of the book Lindy and Kyle/Adrian are still worrying about each others looks. It's like they learned nothing from Kendra's spell.

Overall Beastly is a very simplified re-telling that doesn't go too deep and keeps the writing and themes very surface level, almost to a fault.  This would be a good book for young readers, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone looking for a challenge or an exploration into the true meaning of beauty.