Rebel Rose: 1 (Queen's Council)

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Maybe it was time to be honest with Lio about everything she had done and seen in his absence. Maybe she was ready to tell him about[REDACTED]. Maybe she was ready to ease the burden from her shoulders so they could share it, as they had shared everything else. It wasn’t right to assume he couldn’t handle it. Lio had handled much worse, and together they had defeated the curse once before." Spoiler...She DIDN'T... another instance of being whishy washy. Rebel Rose was the first book in The Queen's Council book series. It was written by Emma Theriault and is based upon Beauty and the Beast, more specifically Belle. It was released on November 10, 2020. Dugdale gave away much of her sizeable inheritance to the causes in which she believed, yet O’Driscoll found her chillingly indifferent to the Irish workers left with PTSD after being caught up in the Russborough House raid. O’Driscoll writes of “the two sides of Rose, the extraordinarily generous and the disturbingly brutal”. It is that tension, and O’Driscoll’s deft presentation of the complexities of Northern Ireland in the 1970s, that gives this book its pull. Overall, I gave this 3 stars because I wish there had been just a little more interaction between Beast and Belle.

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She reached for her coin purse without hesitation and handed the woman a twelve-livre coin, enough for her to feed herself and her children for the days to come. It was a bit like falling in love in a place out of time. It didn't matter that we didn't make sense together; it didn't matter who he was or who I was. We just...fell." The story itself was amazing. The Disney characters, like Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts all kept their original tone and personality. It felt like someone had taken the ended script, the part after the wedding, and printed it in a book. Belle had that independence, her wits, and her kindness while Lio was not only kind, but had that same sense of humor and slight temper. Emma does an amazing job replicating the same personalities as the movie characters making the transition so smooth. Sadly, this book missed the mark for me. I was bored from the beginning and the more I read, the more I wanted to be done with this book. I know it's harsh but I feel like I didn't get what I thought I would find when I requested this book. If you're like me, when you see this book, you think you'll get a Beauty and Beast retelling with at least some of the story focused on the romance. Here, I didn't feel any love or chemistry as the two characters already had broken the curse and were married. Instead, for most of the book the Beast is gone, away on some political mission as King and Belle is left on her own. She didn't want to be Queen and let other people make the decisions way too easily. As for the revolution and politics, I didn't care much about those which left me disappointed. Let's talk about Belle because... there's a lot there. Belle's married to the beast (called Lio in this version) but refuses to take the title of princess or queen because of... reasons. Her big arc is to stop being meek and passive and realize that she was worthy of voicing her opinions and taking the crown all along. The problem here is that our movie Belle already was headstrong. If I'm remembering correctly, this book even starts off with her being described as headstrong. She's one of the least meek pre-Princess and the Frog mainline up (aka, Nala and Meg don't count) princesses so having that be her arc made no sense. I honestly originally just assumed her character arc would have more to do with her learning about the more subtle ways progress had to be achieved in aristocratic societies (Harper from ACSDAL is a really good example of that) but instead we get her constantly saying she's unsure of herself with the book also going 'but remember, no she's not!'.stars, with the extra half star easily attributed to the way the elements of the fairytale and Disney film were woven into the story. It was very interesting to be vibing with Belle when it came to this guy too. Not sure how Lio couldn't see it but then again the guy was a beast for a long ass time. So I guess I can give him a break.. for now.

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Without thinking, Belle wandered into the closest alley and began passing out the coins from her purse. She tried to talk to each person she met, but she was soon swarmed by children with outstretched hands. She was happy to press a coin into them, but she wished she could do more. Money Was a temporary solution; these people needed long-term aid, work, shelter—things she couldn’t readily give to them. Guilt ate away at her. She was married to a prince and yet she had no power to end their suffering. Adding tension to the mix is the fact that France finds itself on the brink of revolution. Belle is fascinated as she learns about the potential populous uprising. She was popular at boarding school – by no means a misfit – and, after she escaped the debutante milieu, she went to Oxford where one of her professors was Iris Murdoch and another was a woman called Peter Ady, with whom Dugdale began an affair. “We weren’t trying to be feminist fundamentalists,” Dugdale put it later. “We were trying to just be in love.”

I have such a love-HATE relationship with this book, but let me make it clear that I do not claim this version of Belle whatsoever! Let me preface this review by saying I am an adult Disney nerd, so I may have been a little too invested in this book. Belle is also my favorite Disney princess so I am was extremely hopeful and excited, because this isn't just one of the million retellings out in the wild, it's a what happens next with Disney's stamp of approval since they helped publish this. So my feelings of excitement I feel are more than justified.

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The unfortunate truth of Theriault's Belle is that she is a shell of her former self. Instead of the wonderful, courageous, stubborn, and intelligent woman we've all come to know and love Belle is reduced to a meek and self-doubting girl who keeps all her opinions to herself. I don't know about you, but this is not a Belle I recognize. And it bugged the hell out of me. I liked the idea this book was trying to accomplish. A Beauty and the Beast retelling set after the classic tale with the French Revolution brewing and tensions rising to the breaking point would have been fascinating. Sadly, this book did not accomplish what it set out to do. Belle, the main character, was flat and rather dumb. Instead of focusing on ways to actually help her struggling people (charity work, tax reforms, building projects, appeasing foreign powers, etc) she decided to host a salon and organize a library in the midst of a political crisis, because that would obviously be the best use of her time *facepalms*. She also ignored her (usually correct) instincts and trusted people blindly (which is clearly something you should do when people are actively trying to overthrow you). Belle may have grown up a peasant, and she may not have taken the title that was afforded to her, but she didn’t think either fact would be enough to convince the people of Paris that she was nothing like the nobles they reviled. And then she realized that he thought her separate from them. She lived her whole life as a commoner, but since she’d married Adam, something about her marked her as different. She didn’t know if it was the shine of her hair, or the fullness of her cheeks, but just as Bastien knew she wasn’t noble, others now knew she wasn’t common. It left her torn between two worlds, neither of which she truly belonged to.The first book, Rebel Rose, will follow Belle as she faces growing class tensions in Revolutionary France. From debut author Emma Theriault, Rebel Rose not only puts Belle in the midst of the French Revolution, but also touches on magic and the clash she feels as a commoner in this new role. Basically, it sounds like someone looked at my adolescent Disney dreams, gently took my hand, and said “I’m listening.” The historical aspects of this were well done. You can tell Theriault did a lot of research into the French Revolution, which makes the world building aspect of the book phenomenal. She has a talent for putting you right in the middle of the scene. Each beat you'd expect is there (e.g. "Let them eat cake", storming the Bastille, etc.). I was the most excited to see how this aspect fit, so I was happy it was well done. Quedé fascinado con este libro, porque al inicio (antes de siquiera iniciarlo) creí que iba a ser muy Disney, muy blando y sin tanto contexto histórico; pero no, resultó siendo una mezcla muy buena de los personajes del clásico de la Bella y la Bestia (tomando la película como base), una Francia pre revolución, juegos de cortes, palacios y una guerra civil a punto de estallar. From what i remmeber beauty and the beast was my all time favorite disney character and i sweared this oath to read any content about this film. And this book is no exeption. Calmez-vous,” he implored before looking directly at the man. “When France is washed clean of la noblesse, it is the Third Estate scum that will survive, Monsieur.”