Hello everyone!
My first book blog after coming back from vacation, isn't it exciting?
Haha not really, but you know what I mean!
I read quite a few books while I was away and I also started one of Julia Quinn's series a week or so back which I might actually feature here on the blog in its entirety, because I'm getting such a good laugh out of it.
How many Regency novels do you know where you can honestly say the mother is the funniest character you've ever met?
I thought so.
But for today's blog post I'm going for something a little bit easier and one of the books I read prior to my vacation.
As you'll be able to tell, it's a retelling. And it's title is Bellamy and the Brute.
If it rings bells for you and you're trying to fit Beauty and the Beast into it, you'd be right! It IS a retelling of that story with a decidedly modern, YA twist, but I actually kind of enjoyed it. Reading reviews on Goodreads made me realize that a lot of people disliked it for the heroine, for the plot that apparently had holes big enough to drive a truck through, and for various and sundry other reasons.
Me, I kind of just went along for the ride.
And then I also thoroughly enjoyed the romance, but that's also me.
So let's start, alright?
Bellamy is just finishing up the current year of high school and dodging the attempts of one quarterback Lincoln to try and get her to date him, because for some reason he's fixated on her - probably because she keeps saying no. But with the town eccentric for a father (her mother died a couple years back), Bellamy tends to be gun-shy.
And also, she knows an idiot when she sees one.
As far as her eccentric father goes, he can see ghosts, or at least, he SAYS he can see them. Bellamy's just never sure.
Besides, she has other issues. Namely like finding a summer job, which she in fact does by applying for the position of nanny at the Baldwin's, the one really prominent and rich family who live a little out of town in a mansion and who seem to be on the fringes for some reason.
Probably their eldest son, Tate - who no one has seen in about three or four years.
Anyway, Bellamy gets the job to watch over Tate's younger brother and sister, and she's told the third floor of the mansion is strictly forbidden, which she deduces means Tate is probably the one living there and doesn't want guests.
Fine by her, only the kids have a different idea.
Later on they'll be good kids, but for now it's time to be little brats and she's lured to the third floor where she first sees Tate's portrait - and also rose petals that seem to lead up the stairs to said floor, but nobody else sees the petals.
So Bellamy decides to be quiet about them.
Until two freaky ghosts start harrassing her in the mansion and she has to get help from none other than Tate Baldwin to escape them.
What's the deal with the ghosts? He has no clue, but they appeared roughly at the same time that he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease which left one half of his face disfigured with his entire bone structure collapsing. He doesn't have the best personality, either, but there has to be some sparks flying, right? Right.
After the initial spats that all would-be lovers in these books have to go through, Tate and Bellamy decide to stop being idiots and solve the mystery of the two ghosts together.
In the process, Bellamy encourages Tate to venture out into the world again, and Tate encourages Bellamy to dream big, because why wouldn't she when she has the world at her fingertips if she applies to colleges out of town?
Oh and also they stumble on a conspiracy.
They figure that one of the ghosts was an FBI agent who was looking into the death of her sister, who turns out to have been an escort. And a high-profile escort at that as they dig deeper and find she had kept one former mayor company. Unfortunately that didn't end well for her, because he killed her. How do they figure that out?
Because after being run off the road and nearly dying during a little road trip (during which they also kinda make things official) they go to the adults for help and Tate's father admits that the money trail in his company they've been following actually means the former mayor bribed him to help cover up the escort's murder. But when her sister was closing in, the mayor had her removed from her picture too.
Now with his oldest son's life on the line, literally, Baldwin Sr decides to come clean and turn on the former mayor in exchange for probation and no jail sentence, and the Baldwins also help Bellamy's father (wrongfully accused of assault and stuffed into an asylum) to get the hell out of there again.
All seems well again at the time of the Founder's Ball where Tate escorts Bellamy out in public for the first time in years, feeling emboldened because the ghosts of the sisters, now devoid of the mangled appearances, apparently let go of the grudge and removed the curse of his disease, sending into into remission.
Before he can actually get the doctors to help him, however, Tate and Bellamy are attacked by Lincoln and his cronies, which only ends with Tate and his poor skull almost bashed in and Bellamy pushing Lincoln off the balcony they're on in self-defense.
The verdict later is that Lincoln will be paralysed from the fall, but Tate is slated to make a good recovery with the treatments, so by the time we draw to a close and the two of them have moved to Atlanta together to attend university, you're thinking, great! Happily ever after!
Until one night they wake up to a freezing room and a ghost trying to talk to them.
Here we go again, anybody?
This was a slightly different twist to the original Beauty and the Beast, in which the Beast is beastly to a poor girl and gets cursed by two ghosts who then want him to solve their murders (as for the girl, he goes and apologises to her, and she explains she'd already forgiven him years ago). Beauty in this case sees beyond the disfigured face to the young man he COULD be if he tried, and my special favourite scenes were with his two younger siblings who adore their brother so much and missed him when he withdrew from the world.
I'd highly recommend this book for an easy afternoon read. The mystery is just gripping enough to make you think a little bit as you go along, the love story is quaint, and the underlying message remains pretty much the same:
at the end of the day, people are defined by their actions, not their looks.
And it's also cool that Bellamy's dad stopped seeing the ghosts after this whole fiasco, too, as they'd all been victims of the former mayor and his right hand man, trying to cover up their tracks.
FIN.
xx
*image not mine
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