Review: Lost in a book (Beauty and the Beast)

 Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a book
 Jennifer Donnelly


For us bibliophile's in the world, there is nothing better than being sucked into the pages of a book. Forgetting the world around us, and everything that waits for us in "the real world", and being hugged by the pages of whatever story has caught our attention. Any story would work, really.

For Belle, this dream comes true.

When Love and Death keep an eye on the Beast as he tries to deal with the enchantment that has been placed over his castle.

Death does not believe that he will break the spell.

Love bets that he will, with the help of a special girl.

As we all know, Death likes to cheat.

Sidenote: If you do not know the story of  Beauty and the Beast, to try to show an act of friendship and kindness, Beast gives Belle (the young lady he is holding captive) his library.  

How does she cheat? Well, she has a special book that she has her goons sneak into Belle's library one day.

This book is called Nevermore. 

Nevermore has the ability to allow it's reader to come into it's pages. 

The problem is getting out. 

When Belle first finds the book, she immediately falls in love with the setting, the costumes, the characters. Little does she know that there are forces at work she cannot control. Being so distracted with the beauty around her, she has forgotten to look out for dangers. 

As we get deeper into the story, Belle is able to go between the pages of this new world she has discovered, and the Beast's castle where she is unhappy. Each time she tries to come back to her world, it get's a little more difficult though. 

When the rules of Nevermore dictate that Belle can never return to life at the castle again, Belle has a choice to make. 

Different takes on beloved stories are my favourite things to read. Donnelly did a wonderful job with taking well-known characters and bringing them to life in a unique way.  The way she writes Death and Love was brilliant. 

This story has the reader wanting to put it down before getting sucked in, ironically. Yes, it is good to live your life and not to be too enthralled with make-believe stories that can be found only in pages on a shelf, but when you find writing that is so on point, and characters that you grew up reading (and watching) it is hard to not want to stay with them all the time. 

Belle is very relatable, as always, but the moral of the story was done so subtly and beautifully that once you are done, you will find yourself appreciating everything that you have around you; friends, family, your pet (this reader took the dog for a walk when I was done since I had been reading for about 8 hours that day) and while you may be the kind of person to just pick up another book and carry on with more pages, and different worlds, with unique characters - just know that life is passing you by and you may want to look up from the pages now and then.