I am coming to realize that the question is not “how much did I like this retelling of beauty and the beast” but rather “how similar is this retelling to Robin McKinley’s two iconic versions”.
And the answer is...pretty close, so I liked it. Shallcross gets the enchanted servants thing and the sense of the house itself as magical and the beast’s messy relationship with his own home. And, thank goodness, she makes Beauty’s sisters good people and the story is infinitely better when the sisters aren’t awful. (Like, I said, McKinley.)
There are, however, two things that rubbed me the wrong way and while I think one is a thing that could have been done well and wasn’t...the other just can’t.
1) the beast’s motivations for punishing beauty’s father for the rose and his contrivance make very little sense from the perspective inside the beast’s head. There’s a line between flailing and premeditation and this beast tries to write his story as if he’s the former when the results look too close to the latter. This is when the Disney approach actually works in your favor - change the story.
Also, I really really REALLY hate any attempts to justify what the fairy did. This book tries. I am not sold on it and it soured me at the end because I think this story only works when the fairy lives outside the moral framework under which everyone else operates. Bring her in and she’s evil. Justify her actions and I revolt.
God, I’m such a pain. But I did enjoy the book and, more than anything else, Shallcross got the style right and I love that.