Jade Linwood
Solaris
25 March 2025
336
eBook - EPUB
Fantasy
ARC via NetGalley
Former con artist Jean-Marc Charming Arundel—Prince Charming, to his friends—has an appointment to keep with a demon. Travelling through an ancient woodland haunted by wolves and bears, he flees a sudden storm into a beautiful mansion. There, he finds himself an unwilling guest of a fearsome beast: a noblewoman transformed by a fairy curse, as much a prisoner in the house as he.
Charming and his two fellow 'guests', Johannes and Wilhelm, must attend on the Beast in strangely romantic settings—reading books by the fire, picnicking in a menagerie, a formal dinner—for which they are rewarded with mysterious gifts of red roses. But to what end? And when will they be freed? The clock is ticking, and more than just his own life depends on it…
I had enjoyed Charming, the first book in this series, so I was interested to see how the story would continue. Unfortunately, this second installment did not have the same magic of the first one for me. Book One was witty, fresh and fun, but Book Two felt like it was trying too hard. All the characters from the first book returned, alongside some new faces. This meant the narrative often felt a little too stretched with the attempts to keep moving back and forth between them. The pacing was awkward because of this, and I also struggled to get a real sense of some of the characters. To my mind this was most noticeable with Beast. I didn't feel we had enough time to get to know her and, in particular, that made it hard to fathom her relationship with Charming and how he could fall for her despite his past love-'em-and-leave-'em reputation. There were certainly some fun moments and witty lines, but overall it lacked the charm of its predecessor. I gave book one four stars, but I can really only give this one 2.5 stars. I assume there will be one more book to complete the story and I will be interested to see if Linwood can get things back on track to produce a compelling ending.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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