Cursed Beauty by Stacey O'Neale Book Review

 

Title: Cursed Beauty
Author: Stacey O'Neale
Publish Date: August 30th, 2021
Publisher: Phoenix Reign Publishing
Source: Huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy!

From USA Today bestselling author Stacey O'Neale comes a standalone YA fantasy retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

The day has come for sixteen-year-old Aurora to receive her witch mark. She should be thrilled. But unlike the rest of her coven, a centuries-old family curse has already decided her fate; the cost of her new power is her life.

After the ceremony, her grandmother offers her hope: Aurora can save herself and prevent her coven from dying by awakening a sleeping prince with the power to break her curse. Unfortunately, she must travel through the forbidden Shadowlands to reach him.

The enchanted forest is filled with magical creatures—friends and foes—including the mysterious son of a powerful wolf pack leader. Can she find the prince in time, and if she succeeds, will he choose to help despite having been placed under the sleeping spell?

Penelope's Review

While I did enjoy aspects of this book, I have to say it wasn't my favorite overall. Love the idea - sleeping beauty but with supernatural creatures and it's the prince asleep instead of a princess... but it missed it's mark a bit in my opinion. 

So I liked Aurora as a character, she seemed relatable and didn't make things all about her even though she was in a terrible situation as the next blood witch. But when she meets the wolf pack leader's son, Sage, there's very little interaction between the two yet all of a sudden they are supposed to be madly in love with each other? I actually swiped back through my kindle because I thought maybe I had missed a chapter or something. I found it very abrupt, and wasn't really invested in the relationship. 

I loved that this was a fairytale re-telling with a supernatural twist (witches, werewolves, vampires), and it was definitely enjoyable - just a bit rushed. Everything was explicitly stated rather than shown, I thought maybe there was going to be a bit more to the Shadowlands, the way it was spoken about at the beginning. But overall, I enjoyed the book for a quick read with a fairytale edge to it. I may give another book by this author a try to see if this was a one-off.

Rating: 3/5 Devils!