A Fairy Tale Retelling

Bellamy and they Brute by Alicia Michaels

Can we just be done with the fairy tale retellings already?! Don't get me wrong: I LOVE fairy tales, but this is getting out of hand.

I got this in my March Lit-Cube. I was bummed that it was ANOTHER Beauty and the Beast themed one, which is weird because that is my favorite fairy tale. Part of it was because it hadn't even been six months since they did a similar theme, and, frankly, this box wasn't worth my money. That is another story for another day.

Anyway, so there's this girl named Bellamy. Her mother died of cancer two years previously, so Bellamy lives with her dad. They own a bookstore, and her dad is trying to get his appliance repair company off the ground. In an effort to make some money this summer, Bellamy answers an ad to babysit a couple of children who live in the mansion on the hill.

Bellamy is hired on the spot, and is told to avoid the third floor. That sounds easy enough. Then she sees these rose petals that no one else can see, and ends up on the third floor. Yeah, that wasn't predictable at all. Anyway, she meets the inhabitant of the third floor, who is the older brother of the children she babysits. He fell off the face of the Earth because he has a disease that disfigured his face.

One night, Bellamy is asked to work late. She encounters some ghosts who lead her to the third floor. Apparently, only Bellamy and Tate, the third floor guy, are the only ones who can see them. Another day she stays late, and they have a similar encounter with the ghosts. On the third encounter, they realize that the ghosts just want their help; they want justice.

That's when this book becomes a murder mystery that Bellamy and Tate have to solve. Meanwhile, they fall in love, and she sees the "real" Tate.

I wish I loved this more. The curator of Lit-Cube described this as "The best young adult book I have read in 2017 so far." I respectfully disagree. This was merely ok.