Bestly -- Alex Flinn

A beast. Not quite wolf or gorilla or dog, but a horrible new creature with fangs, claws, and hair springing from every pore. I am a walking monster.

You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. And I'' stay this way forever - unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsburry, the guy you wished you were, with money, prefect looks, the perfect girl, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly...beastly.

It took me about a day and a half to finish this book and, I must confess that, I saw the movie when it came out before I read the book. I thought that the movie was good, even if you kind of knew what was going to happen. This book is exactly 300 pages, and those of you who know me know that I am kind of weird about numbers...I like them to be divisible by 5. So, this book was freaking awesome in that respect. I am also a Disney freak, and I pride myself on that. Disney princesses were my childhood - and they still follow me in my day-to-day life. I really feel that Alex Flinn did a marvelous job of retelling the amazing story that we all know and love, Beauty and the Beast.
The beast, in this case, is a boy named Kyle Kingsburry. Kyle has everything that a teenager could ever want. He has money, good looks, and a spacious house which he shares with his father and a housemaid named Magda. Kyle's father is a popular news anchor and is emotionally detached from Kyle. Magda is Kyle's maid, she's nice and doesn't speak English that well - something that Kyle uses against her. Kyle thinks that his life is perfect. He has a beautiful girlfriend and he rules his school. Then things start to change for Kyle and he meets a witch, who changes him into the beast that he really is.

Lindy lives a broken life. Her mother is out of the picture and her father is too addicted to drugs to care for and take care of her. Lindy finds her escape in books and school work. She has always had a crush on Kyle Kingsburry, but is too shy to tell him. When Kyle goes to boarding school, she - along with the other class members - forgetts about him and, returns to her normal life.

When I first picked up this book, I honestly didn't know what to expect. I knew that it was going to be a modern retelling of Beauty and the Best, but I wasn't quite sure how it was going to be told - if it was going to be modern, if the names were going to be the same, etc. I was kind of hoping for a Gaston character, and I think that this book would have been a little more like Beauty and the Beast if a character like Gaston was created. Even though this didn't happen, Flinn did an AWESOME job of retelling Beauty and the Beast. I give this book a 4/5, because although it was thuroughly intriguing, I found myself getting bored in some parts and I would have liked to know what happened to Lindy's father in the end. Lindy's father isn't talked about much in this book, but he is still a big part of who Lindy is. So, it would have been nice to know what happened to him afterwards.

Read on!
-Leah