I'm baaaaack! (and it is technically still the beginning of May, right?). I'm going to try to keep the next couple reviews short and to-the-point, so, here goes it:
Kyle Kingsbury is a jerk. He is superficial, mean, and messes with people for the fun of it. And, you can't really blame him, since he has clearly inherited these traits from his father. After playing a trick on goth-classmate- Kendra and pretending to invite her to a school dance, he finds himself turned into a beast. Literally. Hair, claws, the whole works. The catch? He has two years to find (and kiss) his true love.
Set in New York City, this modernized version of Beauty and the Beast plays with the conventions of the fairy tale (Kyle planting roses, having a magic mirror, etc), while also poking fun at society today. For example, in one of the most humorous scenes of the novel, Kyle is trying to find his "true love" by browsing on my-space, and starts using his magic mirror to spy on some of the "teenage girls" that he finds, only to find that one is a 10 year old girl, one a 40 year old man, and so on. At the same time, Flinn accurately portrays Kyle's coming-of-age and his developing friendships.
While I would definitely recommend this novel to fans of fairy-tale re-tellings (and I'm beginning to get the sense that there are a lot of us out there), I think that it could potentially appeal to fans of urban YA romantic titles, such as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Other blog reviews: The YA YA YAs, Cysnations (author interview), YA Authors Cafe (author interview), YA@heart, Mrs. Hill's Book Blog, Read, Read, Read, The Book Muncher
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