S.P.E.A.K. - Wattpad Reviews

Review of: Beloved Beast by inkzerospace

BELOVED BEAST

Author: inkzerospace (Emmy)

37,301 votes ±

2,491,675 reads ±      

32 PARTS 78 PAGES

STATUS: COMPLETED

SYNOPSIS

Blind since birth, Elle Duncan has known only darkness, but her beautiful spirit brims with light. A terrible accident has hindered her father’s ability to provide for his wife and three daughters-in a bleak desperation to restore his livelihood-he’s turned to their most unlikely savior-their brooding and dark lord.

Don Rossetti is bad-tempered with an equally dark countenance to match. Harboring a deadly secret, he’s comfortable spending his existence in solitude, but something about the peasant man who has come daringly seeking his aid, peaks his curiosity and suddenly loneliness is no longer of appeal. He grudgingly agrees to assist the poor farmer but for his generous deed a price must be paid-a debt that Elle Duncan must pay.  

*I tried to keep the spoilers to a minimal*

Beloved Beast, is one of my favourite re-tellings of the iconic tale of Beauty and the Beast. I've always been drawn to stories, both on Wattpad and off, that attempt to re-tell a known tale and add their own little twist, their own voice. Emmy didn't let me down with this story.

I usually find that I have a problem with clichéd stories unless they have been written impeccably and manage to keep my attention and make the characters real. But Emmy didn't just do that.

She made it her own. 

I've seen some authors on this site change the genre, the time-zone that the story is set in, and while these make for some fascinating stories, Emmy's twist was what really stuck me with and made me re-read this story again and again until my eyes burned from exhaustion.

I believe I even further fell in love with the tale that I've known since early childhood after reading.

One of Emmy's unique twists that I just have to congratulate her on is the creation of her heroine: Elle Duncan.

Emmy ingeniously made her heroine blind. This really made her character stand out amongst others and made the process of getting to know  Elle and her life and following her story that bit more enjoyable. I really felt that the loss of a sense really made Elle a different character, it made me sympathise and made her character out to be a strong-willed, kind young woman of her time who tries her hardest to ignore the judgement that follows her when her back is turned. She doesn't let her absence of sight hinder her life and for that, I grew to love the heroine in this story.

After thinking it over, I believe that it was the real quality to Elle, the human emotions and insecurities and issues in her life that really made me connect to her as a reader, and this made so enthralled with the story, I was nearly in tears at parts. I felt like I just had to know how Elle's life would pan out and if she would have her happy-ever-after that she rightfully deserved after everything she had been put through.

It also, to my delight, made her the perfect match for our dark hero: Don Rossetti.

 And wow. Just wow.

Don. *insert dreamy sigh and swoon here*

I absolutely fell in love with Don. He was dysfunctional, dark, ill-tempered and scarred but I grew to love his faults just as much as I began to fall in love with the more subtle, tender actions and qualities he possessed where Elle was concerned.

Emmy, I've found out from my interview with her, also loves the era in which this story was set. I've always been fascinated by any type of Historical Fiction but this particular era holds so much appeal to me, that it was an added bonus for the story.

Anyway, moving on...

Don was horribly scarred after a horrific event with a past love, something that left not just physical scars cursing his skin, but mental scars that left him to believe he would never find love and no one would ever be capable of loving a man with such horrendous scars as his.

After their first encounter, where Don finds himself oddly intrigued by the blind girl who stands her ground even in the eyes of possible danger, a romance is sprung up between the oddest of people. But what I loved wasn't that the love that would have instantly bloomed, but the process of becoming attached to one another, the tender moments, the arguments and the problems that caused them to drift and reach conflict at certain intervals in their completely weird relationship.

The process of their falling.

Elle, due to her father's promise, had to go and live with the Don in his dark and dreary Keep. But instead of seeing the dark side, and instead of focusing on the fear she felt, she tries to think of the positives and she is always trying to see past what everyone would assume to be the Beast. The fact she cannot see his scars being something that both bothers and baffles, as well as secretly pleases Don as he doesn't know how to react to those that do not fear him for his scarred body.

I believe it is this that causes the confliction of feelings to arise within Don and his fear for what may happen in the future.

Their relationship was so perfectly malfunctional that is seemed real and not just some fairtyale.

Love isn't perfect and when it is real and geniune, it is often blind. Which I believe Emmy really got across this story which just tugs at hopeless romantic's heart-strings like it did mine.

At times, it even seemed as though it was a game of pushing and pulling. Trying to push one away while subconsciously wanting them closer. It was a love between two appearingly broken people who found comfort and a safe haven with the other without them even realising.

I couldn't have come up with two better characters for one another and I adored reading every second of their interactions.

Don is the perfect guy, in every sense - even if he is a little temperamental to some.

Add to that stunning romance and you find that there are more twists and turns to Emmy's fabulous story.

Throw in a delightfully wicked villain from the past who seeks to create havoc and destruction on their already pretty-messed up situation, and you have got a story that will stay with readers long after they've finished reading.

It was a perfectly imperfect blend of paranormal, historical fiction romance that had my heart racing in fear and excitement at so many intervals I thought I'd end up having heart palpatations.

It was a captivating twist on an classic and I bow down to your amazing attempt. It happens to be one of the best I've read and as a lover for all things paranormal, I saulte you for including it in a completely unique sense.

Congratulations, and I hope you know you will always have a fan in me. And now that I know that you've considered re-telling more fairtytales, I am even more in love with you and your writing. I patiently await the day that  you decide to share these creations with us, because I just know that you'll add your voice and make these cliché stories in original masterpieces.

I'm not sure if I'm being biased because of my own love for this story, but where Wattpad is concerned? You exceed expectations and you deserve wholly to be published in the future.

Thankyou for the fantastic story.

It's one of my compete and utter favourites and you shouldn't change it.

To me it's simply perfect and I'd buy it if I could.

I don't even care what anyone thinks or if they disagree with my opinion.

This is what I thought of the story and I thought I'd share it.

Of course there were some odd bits that were cliché, but they were bound to appear because it was a re-telling of a known story. It wasn't the cliché, it was what you did with the cliché that made this story special.