Bad Beauty and the Beast fanfic

I read through some of y’alls reviews and I apologize up front because I’ve been really looking forward to writing this review about how laughably awful I find these books. I’ll include a few more disclaimers.

I think these books are trash and I do this to myself because this is the second time I’ve read these series and that’s like one and a half times too many. But not only did I read all three, I reread them. I have only myself to blame for my suffering. And I knew what I was getting into the first time – just look at that christawful cover. Jesus that’s bad.

Now comes the point where I admit, 7 months into this cannonball, how in part it is that I read so much. While 95% of my work is your standard 9-5 office job, the other 5% involves a lot of travel and sitting around. I have to be present but there is nothing for me to and I’m overseas so I don’t have internet so I read. Plus I just love reading.

Finally, I’m mocking fan fiction in much the same way the Jumangi reboot mocks video games – it comes from a place of deep understanding and love. I was very active in the Harry Potter fandom (Fiction Alley, anyone?) and wrote fanfic for that and Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and X-Men and like so much else. I am not here to thumb my nose at fan fiction but most of this book is to Beauty and the Beast like Cassandra Clare renamed a few characters and actually published the Draco Trilogy. These books are so earnest and she’s trying so hard and oh my god do I remember writing this fic when I was in middle school – she doesn’t know she’s beautiful but wow does she have the power to save the spaceshipworldspecies and have all the primary male characters utterly in love with her. Maas, get out of my head, but also get out of your time machine because I haven’t been thirteen in a while.

So that’s way too many words to establish where I’m coming from, but if I’m reviewing three books at once, y’all deserve the whole story. Here there be spoilers.

Plot. Our narrator is Feyre (oh dear god no), a human girl living right on the border of the faerie (yes, she spells it like that the whole time) lands. While hunting in the forest because Katniss, she slays a wayward faerie and that dude’s boss shows up to her house, hulks out, and carts her off. Lots and lots of mournful glances, miscommunications, and super long dinners later, she learns that said faerie boss and his whole tribe are under a Wicked Curse and she is the Only One who can break it. Que shenanigans. All is righted. Feyre is Fae (fuck me) and everybody lives happily ever after.

Until a lot of people actually read this one and the publisher decided to make it a series and now Maas has a lot of backpeddling to do. That’s the only rational reason for what happens in books 2 and 3 as suddenly her True Love is terrible because reasons and the hunky villain is the real love interest. I mean, right? And the Big Bad of the first book was really just the preview of the Big Bad for the series and ugh. Look, they’re not good, y’all.

And the SMUT! Haha oh man this was everything on fanfiction.net I was terrified my parents would catch me reading! It’s all euphemisms and fade to black and zero actual mention of real anatomy. These books really took me back, y’all.

Another reviewer called these books great hangover reads – when you can’t be bothered to get out of bed but watching a movie would give you motion sickness and you just want your brain to GO AWAY for a few hours. And that’s exactly what they are. So they’re not useless, they’re just not good. And yeah, I probably will reread her other series too.