♥ℳelody's Reviews > Entreat Me

3.75 stars
First, shout out to my friend Beanbag for gifting me this story. This was her way of protesting the outrageous price inflations publishers are charging readers for kindle and hardcover books. Thank you so much for including me in your protest and choosing to share some of your favorite authors with me. Thank youuu!

Review time!

A twist to the Beauty and the Beast fairytale that is probably not for everyone. I wasn’t sure if it was for me given the heroine of this story. Oooh boy. Louvaen Demunda puts any and all sharp tongued self-proclaimed shrews to shame.


She’s something else. I usually, normally write off uptight pinched mouth heroines like this after 5 minutes, especially if they spend so much time strong arming and verbally incinerating others without batting an eye. And oh yes she’s one of those. Brace yourself. But….she grew on me. Beyond the prickly exterior, you have to really admire her strength, intelligence, resourcefulness and sharp wit. She showed the bravery and spine usually saved for the heroes of the story who come charging in guns blazing, Louvean did a lot of the saving here instead. Of herself and those she loved. So kudos there!!!

Now I personally could have done without the whole ‘are you still a virgin?’ drill sergant routine she would obsessively screen her sister with. That got tiresome and went really overboard. I didn’t like her much when she was in Dragon Sister Mode. It was overbearing and just too extreme and reminded me of what a grandmother would do. But when she’s around the hero Ballard, I enjoyed her. I honestly was surprised how easily she warmed up to him. I found it a little *too easy* to be honest given her guarded tempermental personality. She doesn’t trust very easily and yet somehow seemed to warm up so quickly and easily around Ballard. I found it sweet yet conflicting to her character.

Grace Draven's stories and style of writing isn't for everyone. It's fantasy, fairy tale, historical, gothic combined. Her dark writing with funny spots of humor oddly works. There are some moments where you question what era exactly the story takes place given some of the colorful unvarnished blunt dialogue. There are a lot of twists and turns on this take of the classic Beauty and the Beast tale. Instead of one cursed "prince" (no Princes here) you are dealing with two. (view spoiler)[Instead of true love breaking the curses, it causes more chaos. (hide spoiler)] I thought Ballard was way too kind and forgiving of his crazy wife who cursed not only him but her own son as well. The curse itself is so layered with so many trap doors that you can't help but feel hopeless for both men and the women who love them.

Now the reason I’m struggling between 3 and 4 stars are 2 reasons. One, the pacing was too slow in the second half, especially at the 70% mark I felt things came to a crawling hault for no reason. It felt more like a conclusion rather than 30% left of the story to go. The author deciding to focus and drag out the final show down between Lou and Jamenin (Gaston in this case) just took forreeeeever to wrap up. Your protoganisits are literally withering away in a castle but yet you are focusing on the mundane daily going on of making tea, sitting by the fire and bickering with neighbors?? It just ruined any sense of urgency and climax. It made the payoff a little underwhelming in the end because I just wanted them to…. just.... get…...there. As much as I loved the characters I found myself really fighting not to skim pages to get to the end. How many cursed fluxes do the poor guys have to go through??

The other thing that I didn’t 100% love? Ballard’s final ‘beastly’ form. I know I know, that seems too specific and nitpicking but I’m a visual reader. If I can’t picture things clear enough, my mind wanders and I scramble to fill in the blanks and what I kept coming up with during the final face off just….....wasn’t very impressive:
(view spoiler)[

Not very frightening to me. :/ I just felt underwhelmed and scrambling to visualize what exactly he looked like with all that tree bark and patches of hair?? on his body. And his face to me was one gaping hole, and that bugged me. The way the author described it was too abstract. He doesn't need to look like a literal beast but help me out a little cause a lumbering tree man with glowing eyes is not really horrifying. (hide spoiler)] Gavin's transformation was much more terrifying and impressive in comparison.

But overall, nice twist to a fairytale. I enjoyed this and will definitely read more Grace Draven stories.