Entangled with the Fae
Tessonja Odette
3/5
Gemma Bellefleur is sick of being under her father's thumb. After a scandal forced them to move, she is focused on securing employment in their new town and living her life the way she wants to live it. When she gets tricked into working for an unseelie king, she thinks that she can figure out how to make it work best for the both of them. The two work together to trick another villager in need of humbling into falling in love to break his curse and save his people.
It's a pretty classic Beauty and the Beast retelling. There are some fun twists and it's definitely modernized in both content and viewpoints to give it more appeal. There are also some super comical situations that take away from the whole possibility of perceived Stockholm Syndrome. It's not traditional B&B as the main protagonist has complete autonomy away from the "beast", they're really more like business partners. He tries to trick her into helping him by staging a fight scene and actually using tomato sauce to imitate injury. It was a bit farfetched but also I think it made it a lot more lighthearted and more fun to read.
My real problem came from the timeline. I just think we could have extended it to span even the three months or something instead of the two weeks. So it felt a little instalove in that respect. Though I did appreciate how their separate animosities were expressed not through violence or something but rather you could just feel like Elliot really hated humans and Gemma hated relationships. It was a nice balance and not to overdone. I also think that the whole fae thing should have been explained a bit better. Especially regarding their immortality, the epilogue gave me no insight to the duration of their relationship and that just feels like a major oversight.
All in all though it's a pretty enjoyable retelling. It's short and fun, definitely perfect for breaking you out of a reading slump or if you just read a heavy book and wanted a tastebreaker like me.
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