This book was excellent. It was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and I thought it was magnificently done. It delves deeper into the characters of the classic fairytale while giving a new, exciting, and unique interpretation. I LOVED it!

posted Jul 3, 2005

In Rose Daughter, McKinley expands on and enhances Beauty, a book she wrote twenty years earlier. Both are retellings of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. I actually liked Beauty, the shorter work of the two, better as Rose Daughter didn’t add anything meaningful that wasn’t already there. Part of what’s missing for me is the natural progression in Beauty’s relationship with The Beast – i.e. from fear to love through trust and compassion. In this book Beauty shows little or no terror at being completely uprooted from her family and forced to cohabitate with a beast-like creature. As a result, her ultimate love for this creature is less satisfying to the reader than it could have been. Still, I recommend it to readers who continue to enjoy the magic of fairy tales, adults included.

posted Jun 21, 2007 at 2:17PM

this is the second of her 'beauty and the beast' adaptations, but i like this one better. i also read this one first, which may account for that

posted Jan 14, 2009 at 11:42PM

One thing I love about this retelling of Beauty and the Beast is the loving relationships among the three sisters. A disgraced merchant and his daughters flee penniless to a tiny village, where they staunchly face the challenge of surviving in a totally alien culture. Every survival skill has to be learned from scratch yet they stay strong, positive and loving in the face of incredible odds. That sounds saccharine and icky, but it doesn’t come off that way.

posted May 22, 2011 at 11:32AM

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