Unfortunately, I tried to read this book twice and found myself distracted each time. With the right person though, this is a beautiful retelling of Beauty and The Beast. A fun read for those much more suited to the book.

I love a beauty and the beast retelling - so I'm not sure why this sat on my TBR for so long! I'm always looking for royalty romances - The Princess Diaries girly in me needs satisfying. Even better if we get an elite boarding school setting!

I know this is a retelling, so the bookish female MC, and brooding love interest is to be expected. I think I'd have loved this when i was younger, but now am perhaps looking for something a little less expected. But I think this will be a really enjoyable read for retelling fans, looking for those tropes!

I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

This really missed the mark for me. Unfortunately, it took me forever to finish this book.

When I saw this was a Beauty and the Beast retelling at a boarding school, I was immediately intrigued.
However, even though I appreciated it was very down to earth and not as fantasy-heavy, I just couldn't connect with the characters. This made the reading experience feel like a burden instead of the enjoyable story I was hoping for.

I think the concept was spot on, but the execution was lacking.

Thank you to Hodder for my netgalley copy of this! This is a fun read for those who love retellings. I did enjoy it and thought it was great fun.

Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

'Of Curses and Kisses' is Sandhya Menon's twist on the Beauty and the Beast story set in a boarding school. The first pages of the novel are very much descriptive of the story plot, and it is also where my reading stopped. Despite being a fan of Menon's 'When Dimple Met Rishi' series, there was a factor about this series that I could not connect with. While I will be reading more of her work in the future, this book isn't simply for me.

Unfortunately I no longer wish to review this book as the first few chapters did not reel me in. Thank you for the opportunity.

This was a slow start and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out but after the first couple of chapters I was so hooked. I loved Grey and his character development and I honestly just love the romance and how the story itself developed, this is such a sweet story and I just really want to read more about them!

A beauty and the beast retelling set in a boarding school. However this unfornatetly did not interest me like the story of beauty the beast did and for that reason I did have to dnf this at around the 30% mark and for that reason I will be giving this an average rating of three stars but for proper reviews check out other people's reviews and if you're interested in other works by the same author I recommend when dimple met Rishi as its a book I read and thought was very cute.

Cover: I hate this cover. It was one of the big reasons I was a bit reluctant to pick this book up.
It quite clearly portrays it as a pretty contemporary and I feel slightly mislead by that.

Main Character: Nope. I couldn’t stand Jaya. Maybe she changed later on. Maybe not. From what I read she has sexist, antiquated views and just generally didn’t seem very interesting. She’s a Princess, yet we’re told repeatedly the royal family there doesn’t Her views on things were so far from my own I just couldn’t connect with her at all.

Side Characters: I get it, it’s a beauty and the beast retelling so obviously we have to have a misunderstood curses ‘beast’. And in steps Grey. (Love the name!) But hope. Didn’t really love him. I’m sorry I just can’t take these mopey woe-is-me characters and he was definitely one of them.
I did find Jayla’s Sister, Isha, more interesting, especially as she was the ‘rebellious’ younger sister, but she wasn’t focused on as much as I would have liked.
The rest of the characters were pretty bland to me. They were almost cookie cutter stereotypes.

Plot: Yet another thing I didn’t love.
I don’t know if I’m just sick of these types of stories, or if in my mind I’ve relegated the ‘revenge by breaking their heart’ to fanfic (nothing wrong with fanfic! I wrote it myself!) But it just seemed such a basic story and one I felt I’d read 100 times and most of them had done it better.

Genre: It’s complicated. It’s contemporary, yet it has magic? I don’t know exactly what to file it under.

Strength: It’s very easy to read. Nothing complicated about the language or style. It’s a nice clean piece of writing.

Weakness: Oh, boy. Where to begin.
Can I say everything? I know that’s mean and people will disagree but I just truly hated this book.

My Opinion: Okay, lets get going.
This book was so not for me. I am really trying to push myself to read a variety of genres, including contemporary, but this was just a stew pot of everything I hate about that genre!
One of my biggest pet peeves about this book was the whole ‘curse’ thing.
I didn’t get far enough in to really get to the meat of it, but pretty early on we learn his dad has just basically written him off because he’s got a curse oh him that means he’ll die when he’s 18. There is one event that precedes this that makes his father think this. And it’s one that while tragic, happens to a lot of people.
It’s just such terrible writing that they want me to buy into this! I’m British. I know how British people think (I can really only speak for a very specific subsection but I’m gunna just claim the thoughts of the nobility too!) and not one of them would believe their son is going to die purely because some Indian princess they stole a ruby from cursed it. It ain’t happening.
I can suspend my belief in a lot of things, and if this had been presented to me as way more ‘fantasy’ than contemporary I think I would have been more willing. But this is set in the ‘real’ world. Yet somehow everyone on one side believes in curses, and the family of the person who cursed them are constantly going on about how fake the curse was! Make up your mind what you want me to believe!
So I gave up.

Star Rating: 1🌟

I grew up at a boarding school so I'm always curious to see how an author would describe the experience, and it's never like what I experienced, but that's okay too, because overall this book was okay. I just never felt like I got to know the characters really well, which led to a underdeveloped romance. And the middle part was a bit.. lacking. I don't know, I usually really love beauty and the beast retellings, but after a disastrous arc from last year this was maybe not the best book for me.

I just couldn’t get into this one right now. I might try it again later in the future, but for now it’s a soft dnf. I hope I’ll love it and the premise again when the time comes :)

I did not love it nor hated it. It was an okay read. I will still give the next book a chance though.

If you enjoy royalty and boarding schools, this is the book for you!
I was a little worried about the Beauty and the Beast aspect (it is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, after all) of this book, but I thought Sandhya Menon did a great job with including just enough of the classic fairytale, without turning into something that didn't quite fit the contemporary setting.
The royalty aspect of this book was super interesting to read about and definitely one of my favorite things about the reading experience.
The characters were interesting to follow, the side characters were well developed and the boarding school setting was so much fun!
Totally recommend

I love a good fairytale retelling. I was especially excited for the boarding school aspect of this novel.

Unfortunately, it fell a bit short for me. I just had a hard time getting into the story. I didnt fully understand the curse. I was annoyed that some of the characters just didnt talk about the issues. I recognize leaving some room for the drama to unfold but this just seemed to drag for me.

Thank you Hodder paperbacks and Netgalley for an opportunity to read this one.

Unfortunately, I was left disappointed by this book and I didn't really enjoy it. The premise for this book sounded really interesting a contemporary Beauty and the Beast retelling set at a boarding school. I enjoy retellings and I love boarding school settings so I thought that I would love this book. Sadly I did not like this book.

Firstly, I did not like either of the two main characters. This book is told via two POVs; Princess Jaya and Grey. I didn't particularly connect with either of these characters. The romance in this book felt rushed. I usually enjoy the enemy to lover trope but for me, the relationship happened very quickly and I didn't feel any chemistry between the characters. I know that this is a Beauty and the Beast retelling but I found the descriptions of Grey very annoying. On numerous occasions, he is referred to as being feral and wild which I realise were used to show that he is the Beast but I felt that they were unnecessary. I thought that Grey's character felt like many other YA male characters.

Overall I didn't enjoy this book and I don't plan to continue with the series.

I did not finish this book due to the file format on my kindle but I have bought a physical copy to read very soon! I have high hopes from what I have read so far and cannot wait to share my full thoughts!

A re-telling of Beauty and The Beast but set in a boarding school – what’s not to love? The premise is that Jaya and her sister have been sent to an elite school for the rich and famous (and/or their offspring) to wait out the media storm surrounding the younger sister (whose name escapes me). But while there, Jaya has a plan to break the heart of the person she holds responsible.

I loved the originality of the retelling: the princess seeking out the beast to break his heart in retribution for his family ruining her sister’s reputation. But Grey isn’t easy to get close to, as he believes in the family lore that Jaya’s family cursed his for stealing a priceless jewel centuries ago. The whole thing had a very Romeo and Juliet feel to it, with family feuds and old curses and no-one really remembering why it all started in the first place!

I did not understand the whole “curse” thing – it was really secretive for a long time then revealed to only be that his mother died in childbirth! Says more about his father blaming him for it, than it does about Grey “killing” his mother. Plus, from Jaya’s point of view, her family doesn’t really believe in the old story that one of her ancestors cursed Grey’s. It all seemed to have been blown out of proportion, plus it wasn’t explained very well. It involved a lot of telling rather than showing, with a lot of inner monologue, especially from Jaya.

I appreciated the dual perspective, although I’m not sure it added a whole lot, as much of Grey’s chapters were him brooding and Jaya’s were complaining about the strict traditions she had to follow. Both characters had their very real flaws that only added to their characters: Jaya was the older, responsibly sister and so followed the rules to the letter, which became very annoying as she put the rules above her own feelings. And Grey had Lord Byron-level of brooding and had a very angsty aura that, unfortunately, got old quickly – at least for me. Having said that, I liked that once they got to know each other, they balanced each other out.

All in all, I enjoyed this story but too much of it was disappointing. It’s not like I wanted Grey to turn into a werewolf or anything (although that would have been awesome!) but to discover a third of the way through that the reason he avoided people was that his jerk father had let him believe he had killed his mother when really, she had died in childbirth. I couldn’t really get other that, as on the one hand it made me feel sorry for Grey but on the other, it was a crappy reason to believe that he deserved to be alone and to die on his eighteenth birthday.

I love a good Re-Telling, I've read a lot of re-tellings so I think I maybe slightly be comparing these to other books a long that line...

I really enjoyed the boarding school aspect and it had some very cute moments, sadly it just wasn't something that I was completely wowed by.

Overall I did enjoy it, I just wish we'd of got something a bit more!