Thank you NetGalley and HQ for an ARC of this book for an honest review.
I really wanted to like this and I requested it as it said it was a re-telling of Beauty and the beast. I also liked the Blurb of this book describing the story involving faeries, and witches with kings and queens. But that all I liked about it. The story was told in several points of view but, as the author switched so often, I got confused what character the author was talking about. For me personally , I thought the story was too whimsical and over the top and when one character started singing about his cock, I thought that was enough now and I DNF at 30 percent.

Folklore and fairytale entwine in this enchanting re-imagining of the story Beauty and the Beast. The typical tropes of fairytales are used - curses, beasts who are more than they seem, good and bad fairies, wicked parents and more - and all turned on their heads to bring new life and a rich darkness to the old tale. The atmosphere is wonderful and it is a glorious, bawdy romp of a book. If it has a downside it is that it has a lot crammed into the pages and I occasionally became confused as the book does flit quickly between a lot of different characters and events and some parts felt superfluous, as if they were only there to make a point. For example I felt that the plot line of the lady and her French manservant was there only to serve the purpose of re-iterating that a woman's lot in life isn't always
fair in a patriarchal society. That being said, I was sad to let go of the magical world that Wray Delany created and I eagerly await her next book.
My thanks go to the publishers and Net Galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.

I'm two minds about this book: on one side I loved the world building and the style of writing, on the other side I found the characters a bit flat and I had problems in feeling any connection to them.
There's a lot of potential but I think some more editing could help.
Many thanks to HQ and Netgalley for this ARC

A grown-up retelling of a classic story, Beauty and the Beast, that was my favourite as a child. The world building is exceptional and for a story that has been retold many times and then some there is some nice originality to be found. A lovely bit of escapism on a chilly Autumn day.

This one wasn’t for me, unfortunately, and suffered from a number of flaws that outweighed the good.

This initially drew my attention because of the wonderful synopsis that mentions faeries, monstrous girls and a cursed prince but the plot was just so slow. Nothing happens for at least 40% of the book, and I found myself really having to force myself to read it. It didn’t help that there are so many points of view too, so I had little time to develop any real connection to any of the characters, and was relatively confused on several occasions as to who was telling the story and what was happening.

The writing and prose were also overly flowery, which is one of my pet peeves, and didn’t add anything to the story. If anything it made it harder to read, and disrupted the flow of the narrative to the point where at times it felt like treading through treacle just trying to move forward with the plot. I got bored, and I honestly can’t think of anything worse when trying to immerse yourself in a world.

A lovely idea, but this fell well short of the mark.

This is a classic story- which is well written. Unfortunately I just could not get into the story. Thank you to both NetGalley and HQ for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

Sadly not for me.
The synopsis stood out for me as well as the beautiful cover and I do like a beauty and the beast retelling but sadly I just didn’t enjoy the book. The changing of povs without warning meaning I couldn’t tell who was narrating was frustrating and I couldn’t finish it.
Thank you netgalley for the opportunity to read and review.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free e-book to review for an honest opinion.

I was torn on the as I really wanted to like it and I persevered to the end, but in hindsight I should have marked as DNF.
The story is a beauty and the beat retelling and the synopsis held such promise, but sadly it was lacking. I found the writing style incoherent, the constant changing of POV meant even with the chapter telling you who was narrating I still had to double check ! The language used felt out of place often , sometimes inappropriate (I am no prude but it affected the story telling) I could see the attempts to try to make the story feel dramatic and otherworldly, but sadly this failed. I loved the character of Randa and she was the only character in the book I felt was truly fleshed out abdicate held empathy as a reader for. I like Beau at the start but his character became too self involved and I am aware that was part of the plot but felt it detracted any care or feeling I had for him. I found the narration from the sorceress to be annoying and was often treating the reader as dense, as if they needed the lot explaining. Overall I feel I am sad as the book had promise, there were parts I loved like Randa and her story, but sadly the rest was just lacking.

Honestly I wanted to like this book. I mean whats better than a book piqued as a beauty and the beast retelling?
The Synopsis sounds promising and the cover is gorgeous but my love for the book ends there.
There is a lot of underdeveloped characters in this book and it flits to different povs which I didn't really care for.
The language in this book I found difficult and quite Jarring. The writing style clearly aims to be gothic and armospheric but didn't really deliver. The other thing I found irritating is the swearing. I mean it floats along in a fragile fairy tale way and then is punctuated with the words "prick" and "shit" I just don't get it.
I enjoyed the world building in this book but the rest of it I felt was confusing and tedious.

Thank you to Netgalley, Wray Delaney & HQ for my arc of The Beauty of the Wolf.

Ah this book has been a conundrum for me. I really loved the idea of it.

During the reign of Elizabeth I, Lord Francis Redmere lay waste to a forest to build his mansion home, despite pleas from the sorceress who lives in the forest, he refuses to stop. So she curses him. A faerie child will be born to him and his beauty will be his death. Meanwhile in the cellar of an alchemist in London, a monster is born. In an attempt to save his baby's life, the alchemist creates a monstrous creature, half girl, half beast.

So there's only a couple of reviews for this book so far and it's not got a great rating but I really wanted to give it a try, and at first I was pleasantly surprised. I went into it thinking I wouldn't enjoy it and really did, for the first few chapters. Then it went downhill. I ended up DNFing at 32%. So what didn't I like:

The pacing - the pacing was super slow. By 32% nothing had really happened. The action (for what little there was) didn't feel like action, it wasn't fast paced, it didn't get my blood pumping or make me excited. It just happened. Then we moved on to the next event.

No emotional connection - there were so many perspectives; the sorceress, the lord, the lady, the steward, the alchemist, an omniscient narrator, Beau, Randa, it was impossible to connect with any of these characters. I couldn't even feel a tug of emotion when an animal died and that's like my super big weakness!

Unnecessary, vulgar and distasteful sexual references and swearing - now I am not prudish by any means. I've read (and enjoyed) books like Fifty Shades of Grey, A Court of Thorns and Roses and Throne of Glass which all have a healthy dollop of sex in them. But in this it just felt wrong. It may have been the fairytale language of the narration which caused a shockwave as the word 'pr*ck' or 'sh*t' was dropped in. But at the point of some line that went something like 'if he kissed the pulsing fruit between my legs' I had to just put it down and stop reading. Just not necessary.

So yeah, this one wasn't for me. Too many perspectives, too much weird sex stuff thrown in to a fairytale setting. A bit weird and not my cup of tea.

This one, sadly, did not work for me at all.

The description sounds amazing! I mean, I LOOOOOOOVE genderbent Beauty and the Beast, and the only other one I can think of is Nalini Singh's Lord of the Abyss. But I kind of could tell that the book wasn't for me almost as soon as I began, although I soldiered on to 24% before giving up.

Let's catalogue the stuff I couldn't deal with:

1. Commas. Delaney (which is a penname for Sally Gardner, actually) loves long sentences, but commas were frequently omitted from places where they really should've been included. The effect was to make the sentences feel like they were hurtling forward at breakneck pace, without giving anyone time to breathe, and this kind of pacing was completely unsuited to the story.

2. The writing. Most of the time it wasn't really bad, but it tried to be atmospheric and IMO failed pretty drastically. There were these weird words constantly thrown in, like 'prick' and 'shit', that felt super jarring because they didn't mesh with the delicate fairytale vibe the book was going for. Also, there were sudden tense changes halfway through paragraphs, and I was like huh???? I get that she was probably hoping they added to the air of faery-struck confusion, or whatever, but they just threw me out of the story in a major way.

3. Also, the POV kept changing, which is bad because the characters all felt vaguely flat in the first place. So being in a new character's head every five pages meant I couldn't connect with anyone.

4. (Not a spoiler!) A major plot point in the novel is the fact that the sorceress gets a piece of her petticoat stolen, so she's pissed and wants it back. I mean, okay, but the book was trying to blow this up to massive proportions, like OMG SHE HAD A SCRAP OF HEMLINE STOLEN FROM HER!!!, and it got slightly ridiculous. If it had been explained why her petticoat was so important this would have worked better.

5. I got the whole thing with the sorceress being angry because her trees were being cut down so she cursed the earl responsible, but a whole bunch of random side-people appeared and muddled the main plotline. So I got kind of confused which quickly led to being bored.


I think that's everything! It's shame, as I was really looking forward to it, but I think I've struggled enough with this one.

This was an amazing adult re-imagination of a classic story! I absolutely loved the plot and the ending! The characters were fantastically written! The mythology in general surrounding was well searched and well done! If you love retellings pick this one up as it shines out in an over saturated market.

This was a clever and involving retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast story, with the roles reversed and an influx of magical mayhem within a historical setting.

A boy cursed with Beauty and a girl born in secret, half monster, hidden from view. A curse hangs over them all as the Sorceress seeks her revenge...

This is definitely an adult retelling, if I had one small bugbear with it, it is that the author sometimes seemed to take great pains to point this out, with some more, erm descriptive stuff dumping me out of the plot, but that's purely subjective and overall the story flows out beautifully, complex within it's themes and intriguingly plotted.

The oft told story is at the heart of it but Wray Delaney builds a whole mythology around it, keeping things unpredictable as to their final outcome. 

The ending was classic and beautifully done, the writing is immersive and a little edgy and it was fun to read a book where the traditional concept is turned on it's head and given new life.

If you like this kind of reimagining then you'll like this. I look forward to more from this autho

A cleverly reimagined tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ with beautiful prose and worldbuilding. I’ll be sure to buy a copy and encourage my friends to read it when it comes out!