Have You Seen This Cover Yet???

I know it’s not quite Halloween yet, but if you’re in the mood for Christmas, you can read Lily (Sandhya) Menon’s first foray into adult fiction before her full length book Make Up, Break Up comes out in February. This one involves a romance writer and her biggest online critic who end up snowed in, alone, in her cabin. Obviously, they get to know each other and discover their misconceptions have no standing when they’re snowed in, alone, and kind of hot for each other…in her cabin. I’m looking forward to seeing how the hilarity she offers in her YA carries over into adult romance. 

Beauty and the Beast is probably the most influential piece of media in my subconscious. I have watched the original cartoon hundreds of time over the past three decades, and enjoyed the other Disney presentations of the story (I prefer the stageplay but “Evermore” amirite). Even before the cartoon, I remember watching the TV show with my mother or aunt or grandmother (or some combination of the three) until it was cancelled. I have read every version of the original tale that I know exists. I acknowledge that each has its setbacks and missteps. 

But sometimes, someone writes a version that is just…magnificent.

The last one of those I read was As Old As Time, the Disney Twisted Tale written for a YA audience that takes the story and sets it on its head. And I didn’t think I’d find another Beauty/Beast story that I would enjoy to that same level. (Okay, and Briarley. I’d almost forgotten about Briarley.)

And then, someone mentioned Entreat Me. I had picked up a book by Draven before and decided not to read it based on the plot and my mood, but I hadn’t heard of this one (or if I had, I’d forgotten about it). This particular story involves a father and son cursed by the woman who connects them and a pair of sisters who become involved with them. Ballard and his wife didn’t love each other, but he hadn’t expected her dying breath to be a curse on him that also affects Gavin…who is also not biologically his. Hundreds of years later (the book later explains how they’re all still alive hundreds of years later), Gavin has been traveling the world and has fallen in love with Cinnia. When a local merchant who claims Cinnia and Louvaen’s father owes him extreme debt offers to clear them if Cinnia marries him, Gavin absconds to his ancestral home with her. Louvaen, worried for her sister, follows. And there, she meets Ballard, who has been heavily disfigured by the effects of the curse. The pair exchange plenty of barbs, but come to understand and eventually like each other. And things…go from there. (This is not your traditional, sex-free version of the story. Be prepared.) 

While the beginning was slow going (at least for me), I very much enjoyed it once I got moving. There’s a significant difference in a BatB story in which the titular beauty is not a prisoner of the titular beast, even for a brief time. Changing that dynamic automatically makes the situation more palatable, and everything else goes down super smooth. 

(CWs: labor-related death; scarring and scars that move (body horror?); violence against women (not by protagonists); near drowning; gun use; centering of virginity; threat of rape (not by protagonists); description of labor and birth; metaphysical torture; unconscious self-harm; discussion of dead bodies and plague death.)