The Borrowed Rose: Beauty and the Beast Book Recommendations and Retellings

If the Disney animated classic, Beauty and the Beast , is your jam, I already like you. First, a note:  A s an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It’s no cost to you and I appreciate your support!   Disney's version of this fairytale classic has inspired so many authors and finding fun, modern riffs on Disney's BATB is absolutely enchanting.  I mean, I get it.  I was completely obsessed.  I knew the words to all of the songs and had the Belle and Beast dolls… as a teenager.  This is a no judgement zone. Beauty and the Beast caught my teenage attention, because Belle was different.  Belle didn't need to be rescued - she was the rescuer (of all the men) and definer of her own agency.  And of course, she liked to read. Belle from Disney's Beauty and the Beast A Quick Disney Script Breakdown (Why We Love Belle) Just to be sure we agree about how cool Belle is, let's recap the movie script right quick.  Let's pre...

I see you there - You planful readers, you, who make meticulous TBR (to be read) lists, create lovely bullet journals with color-coded pictograms, and actually stick to their reading lists. I really want to be one of you. But… I'm not.  I'm not swayed by bookstagrams and I'm way out of book fashion.  I'm 100% mood reader. I love my organized library wall of books and my toppling stacks of TBRs.  I aspire to be intentional and organized, and then we roll into the weekend and I want a cozy romantasy or spicy shifters.  We're back to the work week and I start two chapters into a non-fiction book that will be transformational, I'm sure, then back to what I was reading before the weekend mood ripped me away. Ok, I'm just gonna own it… and I have a few confessions. I Cheat on My Books Yes, I'm saying it out loud. Normal mode:  I read a fiction book and a non-fiction for development.  I will also likely be reading something for my morning quiet time routine....

I read a lot in 2024 - just five shy of 100 books according to my Goodreads profile .  I've realized I don't love reading goals - they muck with the quality of what I'm reading.  Sometimes a quick and easy book is just the thing; sometimes I'm eager for a 1,000 page tome.  I'm an achiever by nature and if a goal is set, I'll strive towards it.  But reading is a passion and I don't want to muck with that, so I'm skipping a reading goal in 2025. All in all, it was a great reading year with some really excellent books.  I discovered Kate Quinn with  The Rose Code .  I enjoyed Violet and Xaden's dramatic fling in Fourth Wing and Iron Flame , and I re-read the first five of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series .  Gabriel de León in Empire of the Damned is one of my favorite not-so-heroes.  And both the Ilona Andrews Clean Sweep series and Spellslinger series by Sebastien de Castell were super fun.  What about Bride by Ali Hazelwood and ...

Who knew that Beauty and the Beast  would meet smutty mafia romances and become a thing? But of course it is! I picked up a Beauty and the Beast -themed mafia romance the other weekend on a whim.  Mafia romances are not a genre I typically enjoy, especially not the dark variety.  Yet on a lark, I read Beautiful Beast (Perfectly Imperfect: Mafia Legacy #1) by Neva Altaj about a hacker and her scarred, obsessed mobster boss who hides her clothes so she'll wear his.  (Ummhmm... Aren't weekends perfect for a fast, fun read?) It was indeed fun, fast-paced and cute, so I read the second in the series:  Broken Whispers  (Perfectly Imperfect #2)  by the same author about an arranged marriage between a mute ballerina and her scarred husband.  And you can guess what happened next - I read another one. The Mafia Romance Trope So then I got curious as to when mafia romances became a trope.  It's not a theme I remember selling much of working at a bookst...