Beastly by Alex Flinn

Title: Beastly
Author: Alex Flinn
ISBN#: 9780061998669 (paperback)

I originally saw Beastly on a display table at my job a while back. I picked it up, intrigued by the cover (I like interesting fonts), and noticed that it was going to be a movie at some point. Aside from that, I didn't really know much about it. I had rung it up for customers a few times, so I assumed that it was somewhat popular, but that was the extent of my knowledge.

A little over a week ago I was sitting in my living room watching TV when a commercial caught my interest. It was the trailer for a movie...! A while earlier, I saw the trailer for I am Number Four--which I really want to read/see--and thought it was a repeat, because I recognized the lead actor, Alex Pettyfer. As the trailer progressed, I realized that it was completely different! This trailer was for Beastly, in which he is also playing the lead! I was mesmerized by the trailer, I'm not gonna lie... As soon as it was over, I said, "I need to read the book." A few days later, I took a little trip to my local library and picked it up, along with two other lovely novels. I love being on vacation!

Anyway, enough backstory...

Alex Flinn's Beastly is a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It focuses on Kyle, the handsome, rich, and popular son of a news anchor. He gets himself into trouble when he decides to play a prank on the mysterious goth girl in his class after she vocalizes her disgust for the Homecoming royalty ballots (which Kyle has been nominated for). He lashes right back at her, but after class is over, he asks her to go to the dance with him. She accepts, and he begins planning her humiliation.

Kyle's real girlfriend finds out about his plans with the goth (Kendra) and he has to explain himself. Magda, the maid (since Kyle's father is far too busy to care for his home or his son), is sent to pick up the corsage. She gets the wrong one and he is furious. At the dance, he passes it off to the plain-looking girl taking tickets. When Kendra arrives, Kyle reveals the true reason behind inviting her--to make her a laughingstock.

After the fun is over, Kyle is cursed to live as a beast--a clawed, hairy, ugly beast. He has two years to find someone who loves him, despite his hideousness, and kiss him as a result.

Kyle's father is ashamed of what has become of his son and takes him to every possible doctor, miracle man, voodoo expert, you name it--in order to "cure" him. Nothing works, and he ships Kyle off to live in exile in a five-floor brownstone in Brooklyn, with the maid and a blind tutor as his only company. That is, until the incident with the burglar.

Overall, I have to say that I liked Beastly. My ideas of what it would be like were considerably different (it looks like they made a lot of changes for the movie adaptation), but I enjoyed it regardless. To be honest, though, I found the first couple of chapters in part one to be a little tough to get through--Flinn's writing style is nice, so I'm not saying that it is difficult to read for that reason--I'm saying it was tough because Kyle is just plain annoying in the beginning. I'm going to chalk that up to good characterization, though: he really is a self-absorbed jerk through and through. He frequently made mention of his good looks and the fact that he had a lot of money. Once he goes through his transformations--losing his pretty face and, oddly enough, becoming more human--I found him much easier to tolerate, even likable. One thing I liked in particular was his name change. After looking up the meaning of "Kyle" ("handsome"), he decides to go with something more fitting of his physical image.

When Lindy arrives, his transformation really picks up. Although he does not change physically while she is living with him (she has the entire fourth floor of the building to herself), he becomes quite a thoughtful person.

There wasn't anything that I outright hated about the book. However, what I wasn't crazy about was the occasional inclusion of the chat sessions--that was a little too cheesy for me. Considering that this is basically a fairy tale, I feel like I shouldn't take that too seriously. I suppose that Flinn added those to make the whole situation more believable (I mean, who doesn't use a computer nowadays?), but I don't think that they were really necessary.

Beastly is a light sort of read with emphasis on inner beauty--and that's not a bad thing at all. I happen to like fairy tales, so reading this was pretty nice. If you aren't interested in that sort of thing, then you may find the basic storyline somewhat tiring, but I'd say that it's worth finishing for the characters. It's hard to not like Lindy, and Will (the tutor) is quite funny. Give it a shot!

Here is the trailer for the movie version of Beastly, starring Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens, Neil Patrick Harris, and Mary-Kate Olsen: