THE CURSED QUEEN

An intriguing retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story.

Seventeen-year-old Ravenna is the Queen of Lyra, the largest kingdom in the known world. After her parents were killed by raiders, she took the throne. However, ruling a kingdom is easier when it’s done by two people in an equal partnership, and even with her uncle serving as a regent, she finds the weight of leadership to be immense. Marrying someone else is particularly difficult for her, though, because she’s been cursed—by choice. After a suitor broke her heart, she went to Tatiana, her fairy godmother, for help. Tatiana couldn’t fix her broken heart or ease the pain, but she did make a different promise to her charge: “I can protect you from wasting your time on someone who won’t love you.” As a result, anyone courting Ravenna is transformed into a dog and can only regain human form while having dinner with the queen at night. The only way that the suitor will permanently regain human form is if he gives up on pursuing her—or if they fall in love with each other. When Ravenna hosts a ball to herald an alliance between the kingdoms of the known world, Liam, the second prince of Wilderose, arrives. He has no intention of courting Ravenna until Tatiana asks him to break the queen’s curse as a favor to her. As a Beauty and the Beast retelling, this is an innovative take that remixes some elements of the original, familiar fairy tale. Forbes makes some smart decisions in this version—most significantly, by having Ravenna choose to curse herself. However, the story’s interrogation of what it means to do harm to oneself in the name of love is fairly superficial. Indeed, the novel doesn’t seem particularly interested in going any deeper, even when it acknowledges that the path to true love has emotional obstacles: “How was he supposed to learn to love this woman without ending up resenting her first?” This is the first novel of a planned series, though, so Forbes will likely have more room to develop her themes in future installments.

A fun but fairly simplistic fantasy romance.