27. Bellamy and the Brute by Alicia Michaels

read on my iPhone
2017 Clean Teen Publishing
 300 pgs.
YA Ghost Story/Fantasy w/mostly RF
Finished 5/3/17
Goodreads rating: 3.92 - 302 ratings
My rating:  2
Setting: Contemporary Wellhollow Springs

First line/s: "Loose gravel crunched beneath her boots as Special Agent Camila Vasquez navigated the almost-empty parking lot to her car."

My comments:   The first half of the book was quite interesting but, for me, rapidly deteriorated in the second half.  Much too much lovey-dovey, kissy stuff and more telling than showing.  Not enough information about why the bad guys were bad guys.  The ghosts weren't connected enough and could have been tackled in a really interesting way ... but no such luck. All in all, a disappointment.

Goodreads synopsis:   When Bellamy McGuire is offered a summer job babysitting for the wealthy Baldwin family, she’s reluctant to accept. After all, everyone in town knows about the mysterious happenings at the mansion on the hill—including the sudden disappearance of the Baldwin’s eldest son, Tate. The former football star and Golden Boy of Wellhollow Springs became a hermit at the age of sixteen, and no one has seen or heard from him since. Rumors abound as to why, with whisperings about a strange illness that has caused deformity…turned him into a real-life monster. Bellamy wants to dismiss these rumors as gossip, but when she’s told that if she takes the job she must promise to never, ever visit the 3rd floor of the mansion, she begins to wonder if there really is some dark truth being hidden there.
          Tate’s condition may not be the only secret being kept at Baldwin House. There are gaps in the family’s financial history that don’t add up, and surprising connections with unscrupulous characters. At night there are strange noises, unexplained cold drafts, and the electricity cuts out. And then there are the rose petals on the staircase. The rose petals that no one but Bellamy seems to be able to see. The rose petals that form a trail leading right up to the 3rd floor, past the portrait of a handsome young man, and down a dark hallway where she promised she would never, ever go…
          As Bellamy works to unravel the mysteries of Baldwin House and uncover the truth about Tate, she realizes that she is in way over her head, in more ways than one. Can her bravery and determination help to right the wrongs of the past and free the young man whose story has captured her heart?

MOVIE- Beauty and the Beast

PG (2:09)

Wide release 3/17/17

Viewed 3/21/17 at Carlisle 8 with Ella
IMBd: 7.9/10

RT Critic:  70  Audience:  86
Critic's Consensus:  With an enchanting cast, beautifully crafted songs, and a painterly eye for detail, Beauty and the Beast offers a faithful yet fresh retelling that honors its beloved source material.

Cag:  3.5 Liked it, especially the music

Directed by Bill Condon

Walt Disney Pictures

Emma Watson, Emma Thompson, Kevin Kline, 

My comments:  I was really looking forward to this, and took Ella after dinner at the bar at Applebees.  We settled into our comfy reclining seats with great expectation.  Was it as wonderful as we expected?  Unfortunately, not for either of us.  I loved the music.  And the actors.  But the animated spectaculars dragged on and on for me.  Ella got scared in a couple of places.  She told me she was going to have nightmares, and covered her face at one point.  So afterwards, in the car, I asked her about it. Spoiler alert:  In the scene where Belle and the Beast are transported back to Paris where she was born and her mother died had no meaning for ten-year-old Ella.  She didn't understand any of it, and the picture of the doctor with what she described as a "duck mask" was really, really creepy to her since she didn't understand the context.  She told me she felt much better after I explained what a plague was, did, and why they had to get the baby out of there fast. Emma Watson is adorable, and I loved Kevin Klein as her father.  But yes, unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  The fantastic journey of Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman who is taken prisoner by a beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle's enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast's hideous exterior and realize the kind heart and soul of the true Prince within.

5. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Cruel Beauty Universe #1
listened to in the car  to work and to Phoenix for PLC Conference
2014 Balzer & Bray
352 pgs.
YA Fantasy
Finished 2/6/16
Goodreads rating: 3.77
My rating: 1/Did not like it
Setting: Arcardia in the past/future/who knows

First line/s:   "I was raised to marry a monster."

My comments:  I so want to give this at least a 2, "it was okay," but I really didn't like it at all, so I must be honest.  I wanted to give up reading constantly, but was curious to see how Hodge would finally end the story.  Part of my problem was, I think, the reader.  She sounded so much older than a 17-year old protagonist.  And for Nix to fall so quickly for both Shade and Ignifex (I didn't read it, I listened, so don't know any of the spellings) --- why?  All the magical "hearts" she'd learned about as a child - nothing was given enough attention except for her endless dreams, sights, and movements around the mansion/castle.  I may have had an entirely different reaction if I'd read this, but I didn't....

Goodreads synopsis: Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.
          Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.
          Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
          With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
          But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.
          As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

46. Beastly - Alex Flinn

HarperTeen, 2007
$8.99
300 pages
Rating: I did enjoy this story, more than I thought I would.....4/5

Alex Flinn's version of Beauty and the Beast is a page turner. I saw a trailer for the movie as a preview a few weeks ago, it looked quite good, so decided to read the book before the movie hits the big screen in July. Now, with a bit of research, I see that it has been delayed until next March. Bummer. The summer movies...at least so far....have not interested me very much.

Kyle Kingsbury is spoiled, gorgeous, self-centered, and has a wild mean streak. He gets everything handed to him by his father. Everything except his father's care, love, and attention. The dad's a well known, handsome, workaholic news anchor in NYC. So Kyle is pretty much on his own, and not a nice guy. Of course, it's his father's attention that he craves more than anything.

When he pulls a prank on a fellow high school student, asking her to the prom when he doesn't intend to follow through, he discovers that she's a witch and she turns him into a beast. An ugly, clawed and fanged, furry creature. His life suddenly takes a nose dive.

SPOILERS AHEAD: His father sets him up in his own five-story home in Brooklyn, knowing that he cannot show his face outside the realms of this house. And slowly Kyle, with the help of a caring, blind, live-in tutor and his non-judgmental housekeeper/cook, changes. He becomes a reader, and a gardener, growing lovely roses of every color and type. And then, a drug-addict thief changes everything for him....for the good, believe it or not. For he is willing to give over his daughter in exchange for freedom.

Happy ending, of course, as most of us know some version of the story. But how it all comes together is great fun. Lots of lessons here, about beauty and what is really important. Very different from the other books of Alex Flinn that I've read.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the movie, which will have Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, and a creative makeup job, sans fur, for Kyle the beast, who will be played by Alex Pettyfer. But we'll have to wait until March 18th to see it. Bummer.

The Great Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog - Margaret Read Macdonald

Illustrated by Julie Paschkis
August House, 2007
$16.95
32 thick, glossy pages
for: Young kids, fairy tale comparison studies
Endpapers: 12 boxes on each page (24 total). The separations are rope. Each box contains a plant and its "meaning". For example: Hawthorne/hope, Mustard Seed/indifference, Hazel/reconciliation, Sweet Pea/departure. These illustrations are sprinkled around on the pages of the book, so after reading, you could have a see how each accompanies that part of the story. Hmm. Clever idea.

A rich man is saved by a great smelly, slobbery, small-tooth dog and promises to give the dog one of his treasures. It is the rich man's daughter the dog desires, and she dutifully accompanies him off to his home -- which ends up being a spectacular castle. The daughter and the dog become close friends. One day he finds her crying and discovers that she misses her father. Upon the daughter's reconciliation with her father, the dog discovers that she had "the look of love in her eyes" for him, and he tore off his wooly coat and became a handsome prince. Well, I've got to say that I didn't consider him particularly handsome....

..... but I do love the illustrations. They have such a folksly, Scandinavian/Russian look to them. Julie Pachkis is such a wonderful artist. Each illustration is encased with the same rope that makes the squares on the endpaper. What is left in the white space are the words and branches of plants from the endpapers.

The moral of the story: Don't ever forget to be kind. Kindness. Is. Huge. And in the poor princess's case, it changed her life when she didnt goof up.