From New York Times bestselling, carnegie-award-winning
author Jennifer Donnelly comes a revolutionary, gender-swapped
retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will forever change how you
think about beauty, power, and what it really means to follow
your heart.
What makes a girl "beastly?" Is it having too much ambition? Being
too proud? Taking up too much space? Or is it just wanting
something, anything, too badly?
That's the problem Arabella faces when she makes her debut in
society. Her parents want her to be sweet and compliant so she can
marry well, but try as she might, Arabella can't extinguish the
fire burning inside her - the source of her deepest wishes, her
wildest dreams.
When an attempt to suppress her emotions tragically backfires,
a mysterious figure punishes Arabella with a curse, dooming her
and everyone she cares about, trapping them in the castle. As the
years pass, Arabella abandons hope. The curse is her fault - after
all, there's nothing more "beastly" than a girl who expresses
her anger - and the only way to break it is to find
a boy who loves her for her true self: a cruel task for a girl
who's been told she's impossible to love.
When a handsome thief named Beau makes his way into the castle,
the captive servants are thrilled, convinced he is the one to break
the curse. But Beau - spooked by the castle's strange and forbidding
ladies-in-waiting, and by the malevolent presence that stalks
its corridors at night - only wants to escape. He learned long
ago that love is only an illusion. If Beau and Arabella have
any hope of breaking the curse, they must learn to trust their wounded
hearts, and realize that the cruelest prisons of all
are the ones we build for ourselves.