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Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book by Jennifer Donnelly

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Brief synopsis (no spoilers): Belle finds an enchanted book during her stay at the castle. 

Category: YA

Why I chose this book: I love Beauty and the Beast and books, so it sounded like an interesting twist

My personal opinion: *Some spoiler alerts but I don't know how to describe it without.* 


Death and Love are characters (used in much the same way as in The Book Thief). It was one of Love's Enchantresses that put the spell on the Beast and castle and Death and Love have a bet as to who will win out over the Beast. Death stacks the book (literally) by putting a book called Nevermore into the library.This prologue was kind of interesting. Belle is frustrated by the Beast and her life at the castle. Those feelings coupled with her adventurous spirit, Belle walks right into Nevermore when she finds it. (And the reader is screaming, "Don't do it!") It is a magical world until the enchantment starts to fall apart and Belle finds out that it has all been an illusion and a trap. This part creeped me out a bit and I probably wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't been relatively close to the end and wanted to see how the author wrapped up the story. I definitely recommend that readers be closer to teens than middle school to pick this one up. 

Warnings
Language: None
Violence: Very minor
"Adult" situations: None 
Death: Some (of non-human creatures)

Movie rating equivalent: PG-13

Protagonist description: At the beginning at least Belle is the same adventurous, kind girl that she is in the Disney movie and while it;s understandable from her character's perspective I wanted to scream at her at several parts during the book. It's hard to see a smart beloved character far for something you know isn't going to turn out well. 

Point of view of story: Belle

Book length: Medium

Story flow: A bit chopey as she moves between worlds, but easy to follow

Grammar and spelling issues:None

Character connection (no spoilers): Death and Love were interesting. And as for the actual characters from Beauty and the Beast, I'd be interested in knowing more about all of them. 

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