Book review :: Beast, A Tale of Love and Revenge by Lisa Jensen

Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge by Lisa Jensen
ISBN: 9780763688806
on 1st September 2018
Genres: Fairy Tale, Retelling
Pages: 352
Source: Walker Books AUS
Find at Walker Books AUS
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Filled with magic and fierce emotion, Lisa Jensen's multilayered novel will make you question all you think you know about beauty, beastliness, and happily ever after.

They say Château Beaumont is cursed. But servant-girl Lucie can’t believe such foolishness about handsome Jean-Loup Christian Henri LeNoir, Chevalier de Beaumont, master of the estate. But when the chevalier's cruelty is revealed, Lucie vows to see him suffer. A wisewoman grants her wish, with a spell that transforms Jean-Loup into monstrous-looking Beast, reflecting the monster he is inside. But Beast is nothing like the chevalier. Jean-Loup would never patiently tend his roses; Jean-Loup would never attempt poetry; Jean-Loup would never express remorse for the wrong done to Lucie. Gradually, Lucie realizes that Beast is an entirely different creature from the handsome chevalier, with a heart more human than Jean-Loup’s ever was. Lucie dares to hope that noble Beast has permanently replaced the cruel Jean-Loup — until an innocent beauty arrives at Beast’s château with the power to break the spell.

Last updated on 18 April 2023

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What is Beast A Tale of Love and Revenge about?

Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge starts the way you might think; with a grand palace, a prince, a host of servants running around, a girl. But unlike the fairy tale we all know and love, that’s where it changes.

Trigger warning! 

Lucie, a maiden from a village, comes to work at Château Beaumont, ready to work hard and please her family. People talk; they say there’s a curse running through the halls of the Château, though Lucie can’t believe it has anything to do with the incredibly handsome master of the estate: Jean-Loup Christian Henri LeNoir. Trigger warning here: It’s not until Jean-Loup rapes her that she then believes. Desperate for help and filled with hatred and desire for revenge, Lucie meets with an elderly woman and watches as a curse is thrown upon Jean-Loup, turning him from prince to beast.

But not all is as it seems, and as Lucie and Beast begin to live out their lives in the now-abandoned Château Beaumont, Lucie comes to realise that the man she hated is gone, replaced by a kind-hearted, loving Beast. The only way Jean-Loup will ever return is if Beast can get a girl to marry him. There’s a knock on the door one day, and, well you know how the story goes. Or do you?

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My thoughts on Beast A Tale of Love and Revenge

Unlike most of my book reviews, I’m going to start this one at the time I closed the cover and ended the story. I sat for a good ten minutes or so just thinking. I couldn’t quite get my thoughts together or a rating locked down. Perhaps I’m still unsure (perhaps I will decide its fate by writing out this review before I decide). Never have I struggled so much to rate a story than this one. Let me explain.

When I first read the synopsis of Beast was very keen to read it. A retelling of one of my favourite fairy tales? Yes, please. I had just finished reading Sea Witch (an origin-like story of Ursula in the Little Mermaid) and was ready and eager for another spin on a classic. We’re introduced in the first scenes to Lucie, who is about to start working at the Château, and for the rest of the story, we follow her, in a first-person account. As Jean-Loup is cursed and turned into Beast, so is Lucie, but she turns into a non-moving candelabra, much like that of Lumiere. She can think and feel, but cannot speak, though she can surge the flames in her candles (which never go out) to communicate a little.

As Lucie can no longer move on her own accord, any account of the story we get is from a stationary position. A few chapters she will be on a windowsill, watching Beast of the window, revelling in the fact that she has brought him great misery in this horrible beastly body, or she’ll be carried around the estate when Beast starts to lose any sense of Jean-Loup and becomes more tender-hearted.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, in case I ruin the story for you, but the middle section of the book is very similar to the story we already know. The same sort of events take place, and it’s only really the beginning – when we learn how he turns into Beast – and the end – where we find out why – that are different. Jensen adds her padding to the story in a way that allows the characters to have more reason, more meaning in the situations they’re thrown into.

“The heart revels in its mysteries. Defy them at your peril. Embrace them if you dare. That is where magic begins.”

Like many fairy tale retellings I’ve read, I appreciated the unique perspective on the story – what happens if there’s another girl? What would it be like for all the staff and servants to be suddenly turned into furniture and household items? – and how it was about a third character, Lucie, rather than the characters of Beauty/Belle/Rose and the Beast. The last few pages where Jensen spells out the moral, or the themes in the book did make you think about beauty and its place in society, what is deemed to be beautiful etc. There were a few sentences that I particularly enjoyed, and the turn of phrase was often beautifully written.

However! There were multiple things about the story that I found jarring and didn’t sit well with me. Jean-Loup is a horrific man, I get it, but I do not think that whole sections were necessary in the story, the pages and pages of lack of dialogue didn’t appeal to one who loves banter and talking in stories more so than prose and description, and the explanation of why Beast and Jean-Loup were one and the same but also …not, was lacking something.

My struggle, therefore, with the rating of this book was that I liked the concept, I liked parts of the writing which means I move past 1-star (categorised on Goodreads as ‘did not like’), and I even didn’t mind the idea that Beast was Jean-Loup’s real self … but I didn’t like a lot of things too, and so for that I can’t give it more than a 2-star (which is ‘it was okay’) and finally, as I write the last sentence of this review, I’m settling on a 1.5 star rating.

Have you read Beast A Tale of Love and Revenge?

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I received this book for free from Walker Books AUS in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.