Beastly

Title: Beastly
Author: Alex Flinn
Year Published: 2007
Publisher: HarperTEEN
Price: Rp. 69.000 (Periplus)

The story is about....

A boy named Kyle Kingsbury. He was handsome, he was rich, and he was snob. He was the most popular boy at school and always looked down on the other students who were not as blessed as him (means less goodlooking, less rich, etc.). Before the prom night, Kyle decided to do a little prank to a weird gothic student named Kendra. He wanted to pretend that he was interested in Kendra and wanted to asked her to the prom when actually Kyle had already asked his girlfriend, Sloane, to be his partner. He planned to dump Kendra on the prom. One thing that Kyle didn't know was that Kendra already knew Kyle's plan to her and that she had a better plan upon Kyle.

"Kyle Kingsbury, what you did was ugly. And it wasn't the first time. All your life you've gotten special treatment because of your beauty, and all your life you've used that beauty to be cruel to those less fortunate."

She waved her hand with a shower of sparks.

"I have transformed you to your truer self."

I was a beast.

Kendra was a witch and on the midnight after the prom, she cursed Kyle to be a beast. To break the spell, in two years Kyle must meet his true love, the one that he love and would love him back, and kiss her. Otherwise, he would be forever beast.

I've changed my name.

There was no Kyle anymore. There was nothing left of Kyle. Kyle Kingsbury was dead. I didn't want his name anymore.

I looked up the meaning of Kyle online, and that clinched it. Kyle means "handsome". I wasn't. I found a name that means "ugly", Feo (who would name their kid that?). But finally settled on Adrian, which means "dark one". That was me, the dark one.

Kyle then moved to Brooklyn, only with his maid, Magda, and a blind tutor his father hired for him named Will. Kyle changed his name to Adrian and he focused his life to rose planting. One day, a man broke into Adrian's house, tried to steal something but got caught by Adrian. The man then exchanged his life with his daughter's. He promised Adrian that he would bring her daughter to live with Adrian and Adrian accepted it, thinking that maybe she was his true love.

"I thought she'd be impressed with the stuff I bought her, the beautiful furniture, and the clothes. She's poor, and I thought that if I bought her jewelry and pretty things, she'd give me a chance. But she doesn't want any of it."

Will smiled. "No, she doesn't. She just wants her freedom. Don't you?"

The man kept his promise and brought his 16 year old daughter, Lindy, to Adrian's house. At first, Lindy hated to be a prisoner in Adrian's house and Adrian was almost desperate when things gradually changed. Lindy saw Adrian and she wasn't scared. She was now becoming his new friend and they spent time together. Lindy loved books and roses and Adrian fell in love so deep with her so that he's willing to give anything Lindy needs. The only problem was: would Lindy love him back, despite his ugly appearance? Would Lindy kiss him and break the spell?

My thought about this book...

I love Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It is my favorite cartoon ever besides The Lion King. I love Belle and Beast's love story and I love Beast so much. When I watched the Beastly movie, I already knew that it was a Beauty and The Beast retelling and I was a bit pessimistic that it would be as good as the cartoon one. And I turned out to be right. I don't like the movie. The story seems so shallow, I can't feel the chemistry between Kyle and Lindy and I don't get why the Beast must be covered with tattoos instead of fur like he is supposed to be. Was that because the role was played by Alex Pettyfer who apparently has good body that had to be shown off in the movie?

After I saw the movie, I really didn't plan to buy the book because the movie was so disappointing for me but then I found the book on a sale rack in Periplus PIM and I just bought it. And I remembered my I Saw It, I Read It challenge so that I decided to read it as soon as possible. The book turned out to be quite good. I love it, and I hate the movie more because it differs a lot from the book. The movie changed most of the characters' name and so many scenes were different from the book. The book is actually quite similar with the Disney cartoon but the movie wasn't similar at all.

To avoid my further rants about the movie, let's just focus to the book, okay?

The book is perfectly written as it is very entertaining, funny and also romantic. This book uses Kyle's point of view and, although he was snob and I really wanted to slap him at the beginning, he actually had an interesting thought. He was such an interesting main character. He was frustrated and also sarcastic. He often saw his life as a comedy and comparing his life as a beast to the classic novels that also had ugly main characters like The Hunchback of Notredame, Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Grey. But when it came to love, he could also be romantic. Well, it actually can be seen by his hobby of planting roses. I love how he considered Lindy's feeling before doing something for her. I love how he often panicked because he didn't know what to do to make Lindy like him. I love everything about him.

I also love Kendra. She's such a good witch actually. After casting a spell to Kyle (or Adrian), she didn't just leave him and let him struggle by himself. Kendra still guided him and be almost like his friend. Sometimes she could be like average teenagers although actually she's been living in this world long enough.

Now, talking about the whole plot, weeelll... As I already said, this is a retelling of a famous classic story, so the love story is almost like what it is supposed to be, except the story in Beastly happens at our present time. It's predictable. I'm not saying that this is bad, I'm just not letting you to expect something new from the plot. There's no scene where the Beast would finally fell in love with the witch or something like that. All you have to do is just read it and enjoy the process from the beginning til the end. It wasn't boring at all for me, because, like I've typed two paragraphs above, reading this story from Beast's perspective is quite entertaining.  

Overall, I love reading this book. Oh!! Since this post is a part of my I Saw It, I Read It project, I will post some scenes from the movie too.. I didn't download the movie so that I can only manage to make animations from the trailer video. Enjoy!

Kyle before transformed into Beast: "Beautiful people get it better."

Kyle and Lindy

Recommended to readers who don't mind reading retelling fairy tales or classics.