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The Curse Girl by Kate Avery Ellison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Bee is imprisoned in a magical, cursed house because of her father's selfish choices, she has just one plan... escape! But she must solve a riddle and help her fellow prisoners break the curse that binds them all before she can leave, and that is proving more difficult than she originally thought thanks to the bitter young master of the house, Will.
Will wants nothing to do with Bee or her help (and he certainly isn't planning on falling in love with her), but he might have underestimated just how determined and clever--and irresistible--she can be.

Excuse me while I'm



for a while.


*Try to recompose myself which may or may not help in the construction of a coherent review because I'm pretty much in my fangirling mode*


My dear fellow readers,


I know there are a few reasons which render you feeling skeptical about the awesomeness of this Beauty and the Beast retelling.


1. The..well, the whole Beauty and the Beast retelling idea. When authors decided for their work to be based on a well known fairy tale, they either scored or failed miserably because they (the harsh word is, pardon me) basically ripped off these popular stories which most likely have a strong-based fans. So without a credit for originality, if you didn't nail it then your book will just be mocked around. Surprisingly, Miss Ellison here had done the near impossible task by nailing her version of Beauty and the Beast!


1. The title: Gee...if you put this book side by side to, let say,The Dark Divine, based on the title alone, I'd go with the latter on any days. But the title, The Curse Girl best suits the book anyway, so why I am complaining when the content is this good.


2. The cover: While I found the colour scheme as very nice, I'm always uncomfortable with model exposing her skin like that. (I know I should keep my conservative side to myself) but hey, Bee wasn't anywhere near a seductive or a sensual character, so the cover is a bit misleading for me.


3. Bee's full name is Beauty. At first, I was like, seriously? Craving for some originality here!  I remembered her inner monologue which mentioned that Beauty was not her real name but I didn't recall her name was fully revealed until the end of the story.


4. The length. Yup, it's very short. And sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Here we got a book which doesn't kid you around, telling you about all these craps you don't even care. Actually, I'm glad this book is short, otherwise, it might fail to sustain its magic on me. Nothing rushed, nothing underdeveloped, it was just nice :)


5. It is only $2.99 on Amazon. Okay, so you're being suspicious to unusually cheap books? Read Angelfall then you'll vomit rainbows.


Okay, here comes the actual review.


The plot

I admit that the whole plot was a bit Disney-ish but not that kind of silly Disney where everything is too good too be true. I believe every thing that happened in this book made sense and was justified appropriately.


While the storyline may be obvious to some readers, I was quite blinded by my swooning over Will! Haha...sometimes it is fun to let the books taken you by surprise instead of you trying to figure everything out from page 1.


The characters

I actually like every single character in this book!


Beauty - I warned you while Beauty is a certified martyr, she is still in her junior year, so stuff like prom, ice cream, sleepovers are still within her concerns. Yes, she ain't no Katniss or Penryn, but she is a very resourceful character. She can be reckless sometimes but still within reasons. And yeah, she IS funny.


The steps to the labyrinth fell away from me. A dank draft caught the candle flame and made it dance.

“Maybe I’m supposed to go down these steps,”I muttered aloud. Famous last words, maybe. 

I inched forward. My toe bumped on the next step down. My chest squeezed tight.

An agonizing scream echoed from below. I froze. Better not go empty-handed. Who knows what was down there. I stepped back into my room and grabbed the candle bracket from the wall too. It was heavy brass. Good enough for braining monsters in a fight, right? Maybe not, but I felt better holding it.


See? I was useful.Apparently Beast Boy was too good to “paw around on the floor” and find things.


Beauty's father - While he was the reason why Beauty was trapped in Beast's mansion, he had her own reason and that reason was actually valid from my point of you. So, kudos to the author for not making me hate this guy.


Will - Hello? I think I might just found another Mr Darcy here! You must be thinking, since he is the Beast, he must be the dangerous, mysterious, brooding, cold kind of guy. I tell you what, I don't think he would lift a finger on a lady.


At first, he was moody and quick on snide remarks but he was cursed! Give the boy a minute, will you? Some of his witty comments;


"I prey on innocent villagers and terrify their children," he said with a nasty smile. "And sometimes when I'm feeling really evil, I read books or paint."


"You want to break the curse, I want to break the curse. We don't need to be nice. We need to be effective. Just help me figure it out, and I'll make you a rich woman"


And the most wonderful thing, there was no the ridiculously..



INSTA LURVE!!! They even hated each other at first.


"You’re ruining that book!” He pointed to the page I’d torn out. “That’s a perfectly good book!”

Holding his gaze, I reached down and ripped another page out. “I’m making roses.”

“Well, it’s my book.”

“Sorry.” I tore out another.



O.o Epic fight!!!


I even wondered, how could the author wrote a perfectly developed and believable love story in less than 200 pages!


My only criticism is probably this part here;


Will reached down to help me up, and when our hands touched an electric shock jumped between our fingers.


Seriously, this electric buzzing thingy HAS TO STOP!


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