I loved Sally Gardner's "Tinder " so was looking forward to reading this adult novel under her adult pen name Wray Delaney. In many ways it is a reworking of Beauty and the Beast.

The beginning with the Sorceress has its roots in traditional tales like many Welsh ones or Thomas the Rhymer in which a mortal gets abducted into the realm of Faerie. It has glimmers of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight too and has all those fairy tale features and archetypes we recognise involving deep dark woods, magic, wolves. beasts etc.

There are two main strands involving the effects of magic and alchemy on two "mortals" , The male character, Beau, who is faerie born and lives up to his name in being beautiful but cursed and Randa who is cursed in a different way.

All the action takes place in Elizabethan Times with the inevitable references to Shakespeare ( A Midsummer Night's dream with its illusion and transformation themes is an obvious comparison) There are more oblique references to the Faerie Queen to whom Spenser dedicated his epic - Queen Elizabeth herself.

Although deeply embedded in this "faerie" world, Delaney is looking at the Keatsian idea of what is real beauty? In His Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats closes the poem with the : “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. Maybe in the truth of what we are beauty is to be found.?

Claire, Beau's stepsister may be pox marked (like Queen Elizabeth herself) but is admired by Beau for her beautiful spirit. Randa is a "monster" but has her own beauty.

I was less keen on the "real" world sections of the book and more interested in "faerie" but that is just my preference for myth and fairy tale.

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of this book from the publishers in exchange for an honest review.

The Beauty of the Wolf is an ambitious gender swapped retelling of the traditional tale. the number of narrative strands and the constant change of viewpoint felt a little confusing at times and the attempt to incorporate 21st century issues such as deforestation, sustainability and the impact of humans on the natural world were admirably incorporated though sometimes at the expense of the pace of the plot. The characters were engaging but a little more development would have added conviction to their stories and the often graphic sexual detail sat uneasily within the fairy tale framework. Overall I enjoyed the book but felt it was uneven and perhaps a little less might have given us more. I shall certainly be looking out for further work from this author however.

The Beauty of the Wolf by Wray Delaney

3.5 stars

A dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast



I was kindly gifted a copy of this beautiful book by HQ Stories in return for a fair review.

The Plot

I was very excited about this book as I really love fairy tales and Beauty and the Beast is a favourite and the cover of this book is absolutely beautiful.

The book starts with a sorceress placing a curse on Lord Rodermere when he destroys her forest.

A large part of story is told in the first person from the perspectives of Lord Beaumont Beau (Beauty) son of Lord Rodermere and Randa (Beast) which at times I found difficult to follow.

I thought the switching of the gender roles of Beau and Randa was really clever.


The story is written very descriptively which slowed the pace of the read down for me and there were a lot of characters within both sides of the stories and I found myself confused about who was who and especially when the two stories meet.


I enjoyed the part of the book in which Beau becomes an actor in a theatre company with Master Shakeshaft. I also very much liked the setting and I felt that it was very true to a fairy tale and I could tell a lot of effort had gone into the writing to achieve this.

Essentially it is a love story with a difference and I am not a prude but I felt there are quite a lot of sexual references which I found a bit out of place in this story, but

if you like a dark sexy fairy tale this is possibly the book for you.

I was intrigued from the moment that I found out that this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, one of my favourite stories. And with the added interest of the role reversal.

He is a boy cursed its beauty, while she is a girl, half monster and hidden from view. Both are cursed in their own way, both must try to find the beauty with in.

I also have to mention the cover, it took my breath away. And it is so beautiful it even tempted my grandfather to pick up the book. However, after two pages he decided it was not for him. Probably not enough history… But the fact he picked the book up is high praise believe me.

The writing was very flowery and otherworldly, added to the sense of a magical world, slightly different and older than ours and creating a fairytale atmosphere.

Also having read other reviews it should be stated that this is an ADULT RETELLING. So if you are after a Disney inspired retelling this book is not for you.

This was an imaginative retelling that kept the original story at the centre, while allowing for unpredictable and unexpected twists peppered throughout the tale.

What an extraordinary book. With an initial strong resonance of Angela Carter, in the use of language and imagery, this becomes a wild and sometimes confusing trip into a magical Elizabethan world. Overall, I loved it and am glad I read it. Some niggles however…
An intriguing fairy tale style of story, I liked the atypical characters and the turning on its head of the Beauty and the Beast narrative. It did, however, become a tad confused and confusing, with two plot strands that were not-that-clearly interlinked. It felt like there were two stories that the author wanted to tell, and unable to decide which to go with, plumped for both. It would have been much better to keep them separate, because they both deserve telling, but together they became a bit too jumbled, and neither was allowed to shine as I felt it could, given the space.
What I didn’t like was the recurrent switching between present and past tense. I get that switching into present tense is supposed to make the event described feel more immediate, but it actually only served only to jolt me out of the story, every single time. Each time I’d scan the text to see why the tense jump was warranted – sometimes it made sense and sometimes not, but each and every time it was hugely annoying. I’ve seen this trend in other books recently, most notably in The Song of Achilles, where it worked a bit better than here, but even there, hugely annoying.
Overall, I’d definitely read anything else this author writes, but I might check the sample chapters first, for tense switching – it’ll have to be a blinding premise for me to read it without prejudice…

I struggled a bit to get into this, but I liked the idea behind it.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I like the look of this book and it sounds interesting. It did intrigue me. Unfortunately I just found it hard to read.
I didn't really find a good flow. The effort it took to make myself read this detracted from the elements that interested me and I have not finished reading it. I don't know if it is the writing/editing or simply not the right time for me to read it. Try it and make up your own mind.

This book is a retelling of The Beauty and the Beast, from 3 perspectives: The Sorceress, The Beauty and The Beast.

It started slow, but interesting. It grabbed my attention. Through the rest of the book, it was just too many descriptions and rambling just took away from teh core of the story and the magic. In my opinion, there should have been more editing in the book.
In the end, I enjoyed the story, but I so wished it was leaner and shorter.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is strange yet strangely compelling.

If you are someone who doesn’t like to finish a book muttering the words, ‘what the actual heck did I just read,’ then I don’t think this book is for you.

No, it’s not even that I don’t think this book is for you. I know it’s not for you.

Although the blurb says this book is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast I would say it’s more of a case of the story being heavily inspired by the fairy tale then a retelling.

The Beauty of the Wolf uses a lot of the themes of the original fairy tale and some of the plot points of the unknown and meandering original (there’s two versions) and there’s also a sequence or two involving dreams which I thought was a decent nod but ultimately this story deviates off into its own unique path.

Now I liked parts of the deviation. Loved those parts even. If you want something recognizably Beauty and the Beast then you’ll have to wait until over halfway of the book to get there. This is not going to be a good thing for those who were promised a retelling and were expecting a retelling.

If, like me, you don’t mind walking a slightly unknown path and are aware that this book isn’t going to be what you expected, you may be pleasantly surprised. Or not. There are still some flaws with the story’s journey which again, like me, you may not be able to look past.

This is a gender flipped Beauty and the Beast with Beau (our beauty), a half-human, half- fae man who has an androgynous, beautiful face that lends him to performing as a woman on stage in London – I’ll come onto more of that later. His beauty is a curse with people only seeing his face and becoming enchanted with his looks rather than who he is as a person.

Randa (our beast) is a woman who was turned into a beast as an infant via the power of alchemy.

This story follows Beau and Randa’s viewpoints and throws in a third, that of the Sorceress, who in the original curses the Beast with well… looking like a beast. Here she curses Beau to be beautiful and to fulfill a curse to kill his rotten, black-hearted father.

Somehow this book is a little like the tale that inspired it – it’s both beautiful and ugly. By this I mean when something works well, it works really well and we get some stunning prose and imagery.

But when something doesn’t work well? Sadly it really doesn’t and the effect on the flow of the story and the story as a whole is quite jarring.

I mentioned three point’s of view – Beau, Randa and the Sorceress. I don’t mind multiple POV’s, in fact I seem to be going through a phase of enjoying it greatly. I personally benefited from seeing all the perspectives including the Sorceress herself. Yes, she’s petty and wrathful but she’s fae. Her morals are not the same as ours. Supposedly. There are some genuinely horrific humans portrayed in this story.

There is mindless destruction of the Sorceress’ beloved forest and she’s furious. Yes, her methods may be massively disproportionate but again – she’s fae.

In fact, I think I was more intrigued by her side of the story than Beau or Randa’s. I did enjoy them but this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling (so the blurb says) and they’re here to play a part. Because they had roles to fit sometimes they didn’t seem as developed as I would like.

Randa is obsessively in love with Beau but I don’t know why and Beau eventually returns Randa’s affections and declares love although I don’t know why. Love is declared on both sides but I don’t see them grow into it. It wasn’t there until suddenly it was.

But the whole of this story is about love. And sex. Definitely don’t read this if you’re uncomfortable with reading sex scenes. And definitely don’t read this if you think you might get uncomfortable with non-human sex scenes.

The theme (as always) is that beauty is more than skin deep – Beau may be beautiful but he also has a goodness of heart that no one sees and Randa may be a monster but she is lonely and desperate for love. So I appreciate that one can see past the other but then she does have talons.

Although there are sections that are odd I stand by my initial sentence – I found these strangely compelling.

I so desperately wanted to give this book a 4 out of 5 and at times I wavered on it. Yes, the writing is a bit ‘flowery’ and was trying to strike the medieval vibe but I could work with that. Yes, they were making the beast with two backs (literally) but I could also work with that.

What I couldn’t work with was the deviation (no, not from the Beauty and the Beast plot) but from the setting and the story they had building up in The House of the Three Turrets and the forest.

The trees were felled to build The House of the Three Turrets and there’s always a sense that someone or something (or somethings) are looming ever closer to the house. There’s magic and witchcraft in the woods. The trees are waiting.

People get cursed, babies turn up in baskets, passions get inflamed for seemingly no reason at all. Strange flying creatures are swooping down to kill animals, roses bleed, there’s a mystical land of beasts, a monstrous wolf stalking the forest, shape-shifting foxes and our three strange narrators are at the center of it all.

I couldn’t tell you how here I was for that. This was a dark, adult, weird Beauty and the Beast that I didn’t know I wanted. I didn’t care that this was deviating from ‘retelling’ into ‘inspired by’ because I was loving what I was reading.

Then the story went to London. Oh god, who cares?? I understand Beau wanted to escape his environment but he joins an acting troupe passing through the country and goes with them to the city to perform on stage as a woman. Much is made of his androgynous beauty and he starts to really enjoy his role on stage and he has romantic dalliances and cuckolds husbands.

I started to ask, ‘what am I reading?‘ but for a different reason. It was so mundane and misplaced among the magical and I longed for the story to get back to where it needed to be. A large section of the story is centered around the acting troupe and London and if I wanted to watch Shakepeare in Love I would have done so.

Where had my enchanted woods gone? Where was the magical wolf pelt and ravenous hunger? Where was Randa and her turmoil and disappointment that loving Beau and obtaining Beau’s love had kept her just as monstrous?

ARGH! I can’t be eloquent at how frustrated I was.

Too much of the story was taken up by a plot thread that should have been cut and so those irrelevant sections got a 2 star rating from me. But I would rate the sections I loved as a 4.

Ultimately I can’t rate a book based on two halves so I gave an overall rating of 3. In my mind though this book is very splintered, one half the beauty and one half the beast.

Wray Delaney’s ‘The Beauty of the Wolf’ is a beautiful re-telling of the fairy tale ‘Beauty and the Beast’. This is her second novel intended for an adult readership.

When Lord Rodermere offends a faerie sorceress by chopping down her beloved oak trees she places a curse upon him. This results in a liaison between the Earl and a faerie woman, leading to the birth of a son of unearthly beauty. He is named Beau and the curse means that he is fated to kill his father. However, Beau has no desire to fulfil the Sorceress’ curse and seeks to circumvent it.

The Beast of this tale is Randa, the daughter of an alchemist, who had used his skills to save her life at birth resulting in her transformation into a furred monster with flame-red wings, talons and a beak.

Aside from the gender switch, the novel is quite fluid in terms of representing both gender and sexuality. There are also some explicit scenes and bawdy references though these felt appropriate to the narrative of this dark faerie tale.

I was immediately captivated by Delaney’s exquisite use of language. The novel is set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and is clearly informed by the poetic literary language of the period while remaining accessible to the modern reader. I found it beautiful and felt that it added to the dreamlike tapestry of this magical tale.

The story is told from three viewpoints: the Beauty, the Beast, and the Sorceress. In addition, there are plenty of memorable supporting characters including the Widow Bott, who was able to hold her own against the Sorceress, and the troupe of players that Beau joins up with for a time. William Shakespeare even has a brief cameo. There was also a little fox, who played an important role in the story.

From the beginning I was completely caught up in this story and felt transported into this rich magical world. It is a novel that I want to revisit in order to savour the nuances of the story, language, and symbolism. I also intend to read her earlier novel, ‘An Almond for a Parrot’.

My thanks to HQ Stories for an eARC via NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review. I have since purchased a hardback edition.

This book was such an easy read and at times felt like it had a kind of rhythm to it for me. In an Elizabethan England setting, we primarily follow the stories of The Sorceress, Beau a great beauty, and Randa the beast, in a gender reversed retelling of Beauty and the Beast (that I'd add "loosely" retells).

There are a fair few fairytale retellings out there now, and this one is definitely a darker adult version. I felt it had hints of Frankenstein, and maybe a pinch of Dorian Gray about it, which I really liked and helped develop the characters in roles. The language used at times evoked a feeling that, yes, you are observing the 16th Century - but used sparingly so that it wasn't a labour read or too odd to our ears for modern English.

Although I comment on this being an easy read, this does still get three stars from me (I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it - 5 is reserved for absolute favourites). The switching of POV was not always clear and sometimes reverted back a bit in time - only becoming clear later down the line.

Odd bits did also jar for me, such as some of the word choices, and to be honest, the sexual descriptions dotted throughout. I'm not adverse to them, I'm a big girl, but they just made me cringe and grated against other parts of the book.

On the whole, I'd recommend this book - I did enjoy it, I'm just not obsessed with it.

I rather liked this retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It's set in Elizabethan England, and there are some twists to the original story, which were both surprising and refreshing.
I really liked the language used: it was poetic with a good smattering of the more 'earthy' Elizabethan English (it's what we English are good at I think, isn't it!). I also liked the mix of fairytale, folklore and history. It just felt as though the author had done a bit of historical research with regards to life in London and as part of a theatrical group.
It was a good story that illustrated that what's on the inside is what really counts far more than appearances and that, I suppose, there is someone out there for everyone. Someone who will love you for yourself, regardless of what you look like - in fact, probably precisely because of what you look like.*
*This book actually caused me to check in my cynicism at the first page. And that's no bad thing in literature!
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book.

THE BEAUTY OF THE WOLF BY WRAY DELANEY – A LUSH RETELLING OF THE BEAST BEAUTY CLASSIC

It all begins with the felling of the forest - oak trees that belong to the sorceress, oak trees that have stood the test of time, oak trees that no one has dared to dream of, giant oak trees that are lessened to furniture and furnishings at the hands of Francis Thursby, Earl of Rodermere.

This, Lord Rodermere does against the will of the sorceress, against her request, against her generosity of ‘one wish’ she has granted his predecessors, against her warning, against her CURSE!

The curse: a son of overwhelming beauty born of a faerie womb to bring upon Francis... his death! So, the beautiful Beau is born and in the absence of his father, grows in the arms of Eleanor, Lady Rodermere, tender care of his father's steward, Gilbert Goodwin and the lovely Lady Clare, Eleanor and Francis's daughter. Beau is every bit the sorceress’s curse on the outside. Inside, he is not what the sorceress expects him to be. And that may be because of the star shaped birthmark on his thigh, but a gift from his birth mother. Beau is caught between being the sorceress’s puppet fulfilling her curse and being the person he wants to be.

Mistress Randa, a jailed creature with flame-red-feathered wings longs for Beau. Born dead, she is reborn a beast with her father Thomas Finglas’s alchemy, nourished by her mother Bess’s story of Beau, cherished by her father’s acorn-skinned apprentice John Butter, freed to the sky by a mysterious force, a vixen perhaps and taught to hunt by Widow Bott.

Randa meets Beau but has a lot of self doubt in showing herself as she is to him. She stays invisible with the power of magic that doesn’t belong to her. But Beau can sense her. Hear her talk. Know her thoughts. And there is also a strange presence lurking in the dark watching over them!

Wray takes you on a wild journey with her version of the classic tale set in the times of the Queen with a Lion’s Heart! She picks the world renowned silk and weaves it into a pattern of her own design. Unbelievable!

Wray sways and rips you with her heavily emotional narration of personal desire, vengeance, greed, jealousy, and the inner struggle to fit in...to belong. Wray’s elements of magic simply bind themselves with the story. They are to her narration as the root to the tree. I must add that the sensuality and passion in certain parts of the narration are not vividly explicit and purely relevant.

Wray presents a perfect balance of Beau and Randa and every other character in between. You know not when and how she slips you out of one scene into another. She makes you feel like sailing on a boat along the pleasant wavy waters.

To me, Wray is a sorceress and with the hem of her petticoat, The Beauty of the Wolf, I can choose to stay invisible from this world!

I have read many retellings of Beauty and the Beast, in various forms, but this one may be singularly unique. The story is narrated in turns by the sorceress, the beauty and the beast – and it tells the story of a boy, Beau, created for the sole purpose of fulfilling a curse, and a girl, Randa, who has a beastly form due to her parents’ alchemical experiment to revive her, both entangled in the scheme of a sorceress who sought vengeance on the Beau’s tyrannical father. Conceptually, it is an edgy gothic fairytale style story, with very flowery language and a winding plot. I wouldn’t say it to be feminist in its ideas, but it is anti-patriarchial (and a bit of religious criticism thrown in) and pro-nature in what it tries to discuss.

Beauty of the Wolf takes the blocks of the original tale and reassembles them in a pattern that has key moments, but used entirely differently. Like, the theft of the rose happens quite later on, but Beau is still taken as a collateral for it. The ‘curse’ of becoming a beast is cured but through the help of the King of Beasts, not by true love’s kiss. And the beast is not entirely a person, but a concept that is brought up, and also both the characters. Beau’s aversion to his own beauty, his despair over being an instrument of a curse, and Randa’s stalker moves are quite different from what you would expect of traditional fairy tale protagonists. The sorceress herself, starts from a place of justice, but she is too Dramatic and instead of just getting it over with, she goes the extra mile of making an elaborate curse akin to prophecy which sweeps all the other characters into its net.

Now, you may be wondering if it is what I usually seek in retellings – dark themes, unique plot ideas, complicated characters – why would I give it only 3 stars? Well, that’s because of the writing itself – it was too flowery and archaic for my tastes (even though it fits), and only makes the plot drag along. Also, what is the author’s aversion to using commas? I had to read so many sentences twice because I couldn’t figure out what was being said, clearly. Between the euphemisms and the cringe-y sex scenes (there are many, mind you), the story kinda flounders, trying to hook you into it. The middle practically stalls with nowhere to go, as Beau tries his hand at being an actor (which involves a good bit of cross-dressing) while Randa is off brooding and the Sorceress is trying to get that little scrap from her petticoat back (it is never made clear why it was important for her to do so, and why time was getting its hold on her).

Overall, as a story I would say it was definitely something fresh (ironic, considering the language and the setting) but the writing may be appealing to only a niche audience.

In the age of the Faerie Queen,an impertinent lord will start a disaster of monstrous proportions.

A witch will swear her revenge.

And a love like no other will be born out of hatred.

Lord Rodermere is a cruel and naive man. Paying no heed to warnings, he decides to lay to waste the sacred forest of the powerful witch. Awakening her wrath, he will be cursed to die by the hands of his own son.

It's been 17 years since he vanished, his son left behind as a baby to be raised by his wife. Now he is back, and the time has finally come for the witch to take her long-sought revenge.

But curses don't always go as planned, and sometimes love fills the places were hatred used to grow.

The Beauty of the Wolf is a fairy tale created to retell the Beauty and the Beast. This is a much darker, more twisted story than the original one. But it is also more detailed, and definitely more realistic to the adult eye and mind. Delaney has managed to create a plot where all characters do more than just exist; they all have a vivid background, as well as valid reasons for their actions.

However, and although this could have been a magnificent story to read, there is a basic element that hinders the reader: the writing. It's clear that the author has attempted to write as a Middle Ages storyteller. Unfortunately, the result is a mixture of well-constructed sentences, modern language (because, let's face it - the writing doesn't stick to the style the author struggles for), and a handful of difficult words that are supposed to be atmospheric. Instead, all this does is create an air that turns out as pompous and unnecessarily difficult. If writing style is supposed to help a reader emerge in a story, this attempt has hindered it severely. Quite often I found myself trying to move forward, and the plot was interesting enough to do so, but the writing all but stopped my attempts.

Overall, The Beauty of the Wolf could have been a wonderful, eye-catching retelling, if only it was written differently. If fantasy and retellings are your cup of tea, by all means try it out.

The Beauty of the Wolf, written by award-winning author Sally Gardner under a pseudonym, had so much promise, and I'm a real sucker for fairytale retellings, but unfortunately, it was incredibly difficult to get through. The slow pacing feels as though the plot is not moving forward at all and the whole narrative was convoluted, incoherent and there was simply too much happening. Despite the excellent worldbuilding, the story became dull and tedious very quickly, not to mention confusing.

I admired the gender-bent slant on a tale known for its stereotypical romantic roles, and Delaney's attempt to draw attention to timely environmental issues such as deforestation and the impact it has on life on earth is admirable. I enjoyed the writing to an extent, as its rather flowery and descriptive, but sometimes it veers into the over-descriptive lane and fails to return. Perhaps if the book had been edited better and the characters given more depth it would have been more appealing to read. Also, the use of slang profanities and erotic language feels very out of place in a world of magic and fairies and is more than a tad offputting. The changing of the point of view at the drop of a hat meant you never knew who it was that was talking. I'm so disappointed.

Many thanks to HQ for an ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley, HQ, and Wray Delaney for the chance to read and review this book.

I loved the premise of this story, particularly as The Beauty and the Beast is one of my favourite fairy tales. Sadly, I did not love this book.

I struggled to get into the story from the start but never give up before reading at least a quarter of a novel, so I kept going in the hope this would find it’s spark. Unfortunately for me it never did. I found the story convoluted and weighed down by too many things happening. None of the characters were very interesting and it was just too hard to follow. I was soon bored and didn’t make it to the end.

Interesting premise but too many ideas mashed into the story turned it into an incoherent mess. It was as dull as a box of hair. A few more rounds of editing could have refined this boring, bloated mess into a decent tale: selfish politician mocks environmentalists with deforestation. Revenge ensues!!

This is a retelling of The Beauty and the Beast, but in a totally unexpected way. A complete role reversal in fact! . Told from the perspective of three main characters, The Sorceress, The Beauty and The Beast, this could, at a pinch, be described as a ' green novel', due to the concerns about felling trees and the innate wonder of a forest.
It is a mixture of Folklore and Fairy tale,but not sure which viewpoint to favour. Full of curses, bad fairies, and wicked and uncaring parents.
It is a bawdy tale, that at first amuses, and then the novelty wears off,and the magical atmosphere disappears.
I found the book to be very wordy, full of descriptive writing, but certain events are hammered home so vehemently , that it becomes tiresome.
I found it to be an odd book,and I just couldn't be persuaded by the story. I greatly admire the novels of Miles Cameron and The Red Knight Saga, and hoped this would be in the same vein, but sadly not. Just not my cuppa tea this time.

Enjoyed this adult retake on Beauty and the Beast, particularly with the beast being female and the male being a beauty, I found this very refreshing.
I would recommend this to older students, maybe year 10+ to gain a modern perspective on this classic tale.