Reviewed by Ro
TITLE: The Beauty of the Beast
AUTHOR: Gabbi Grey
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 312 pages
RELEASE DATE: May 15, 2024
BLURB:
Dean
All my life, I dreamed about making the long trip from Australia to Canada to study forestry amid the old-growth stands of the Pacific Northwest. Now here I am, living the dream. Of course, nothing’s perfect. The only housing I can find is renting a room from a grumpy, reclusive guy who doesn’t seem to want me around. I should keep out of his way and focus on my studies, but there’s something about him that keeps drawing me in. I feel less homesick when I’m with him, and maybe I can make a difference for more than just the trees.
Adam
Life as I knew it ended with my horrific accident ten years ago. There’s no point to my existence now, but I can’t seem to stop living, so I hide my battered carcass in my mountain home. There, I can wander from room to room and no one stares, no one laughs, no one even remembers I exist. Until I make the mistake of offering a stranded Aussie a room to rent. It should’ve been a simple favor—two men with our own spaces, ignoring each other. Instead, he’s always close by, and he won’t let me wallow, and what’s worse, I think I’m starting to like that. But there’s no way someone like me can have a future with someone like him. Right?
The Beauty of the Beast is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set in the wilds of British Columbia, where an Aussie forester a long way from home falls for the untouchable man he shouldn’t want. The novel has moderate angst, a feisty foreigner, and what happens when someone trusts again.
REVIEW:
This book was difficult for me to review, because I loved the first part and then sort of drifted through the rest. Adam is a former high-fashion model who ended up burned and scarred in a fire that took the life of his twin brother. In a tragic twist of fate, his parents both died in a fire on a yacht just months later. So he’s been alone as a recluse, living in a huge castle and not taking care of himself. His money is tied up in a trust that pays out once a year on his birthday so despite being wealthy, for a little bit he’s cash poor. It’s the only reason he agrees to allow Dean, an Australian in Canada for a six months for forestry management, to rent a room in his castle. Dean is relieved because he had a place to stay until the night he arrived, when his prospective landlady pulled the rug out. I admit, regardless of the reason, I was so pissed at her. Luckily, Dean had met Maddox and Ravi, a couple who live on Adam’s street, and Maddox is one of the few people who knows Adam.
Adam sets rules, boundaries, and schedules for sharing the house, and Dean is so respectful about following them. Except Adam himself deviates. It’s been a lonely ten years and he is drawn to Dean. Adam does have a type, burly, brawny gingers, and Dean checks all the boxes. But it’s more than that because Dean is kind, funny, and sweet.
The two begin a very cautious path to friendship, with conversations, dinners, and walks with Chip, Adam’s dog. I love that there is also a cat, Maurice, who Dean starts to think is imaginary because he never sees it, because that’s how one of my cats is if anyone is over. Adam is just existing because he has to take care of Chip.
“At one time, I traveled the world. Now, I never leave my property.” I pointed to my face. “I wasn’t always so hideous. Once upon a time, people didn’t turn in disgust. Children didn’t point. I didn’t hate myself.”
Adam believes the wrong twin died in the accident, which made my heart hurt for him. He also blames himself because he was drunk, so his brother was driving. The fact that it was a drunk driver who t-boned them and caused it all isn’t relevant to him.
With Dean’s support, Adam begins to pull himself together. He goes to counseling, starts seeing people, and maybe begins to care for himself a little more. “I want you to see how hard I’m trying…I want you to be proud of me.”
I loved that. However, the book starts to wander a little. I liked hearing about Dean’s job and his past. But we really don’t get Adam’s past. Yes, we are told his brother and parents died and he was burned. But there is no fill-in of the ten years in between. He mentions a few times the bad things he’s done and that he isn’t a good man, but there is no information as to what that means. What did he do? Why isn’t he good? Is it a blowback from the accident, or was there something else? Because it seems like it. I needed that to make the story fleshed out.
RATING: 
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