BOOK REVIEW: As Old As Time

Hello All,

This year I made a Good Reads goal of reading fifteen books over the next twelve months. And I am excited to be able to say that I have officially finished the first book! And since I love to share my opinions on books and movies on this lovely blog I decided I would review it!

The first book I read this year was the novel As Old As Time by Liz Braswell. Which is the third novel in Braswell's series A Twisted Tale. I have not read the first two books in this series though because I believe that they are all stand alone books that have the common theme of re-telling traditional Disney movies. 

In this case the book re-told the story of The Beauty and the Beast which is one of my all time favorite Disney movies. The twist in this novel is that the Enchantress who be-witches the Beast is actually Belle's mother. Together Belle and the Beast have to break the curse and try to uncover the mystery of the real reason the Enchantress cursed the beast. 

This novel is broken into three parts. The first part is written in Flashbacks where we see Maurice and Belle's mother meet and fall in love. But it also re-tells the first part of The Beauty and the Beast. The re-telling is pretty much exactly what we see in the animated classic. During this part I question whether I wanted to put it down and give up or continue on. 

When I got to the second part I was glad I did. This is when the novel starts to twist on the original story and bring life to a new story. I was also really excited for this part because I was hoping to get a better idea of why Belle and the Beast were such a perfect match (But more on that later). While at the same time keeping to the original story when we saw what Maurice was going through.

The final part of the novel was a little bit of a let down. By this point I had pretty much guessed why everything happened the way it had happened. And was even disappointed by the answer to one of the mysteries. The last chapter of the book made want a sequel though because Braswell left it open for Belle and the Beast to start a whole new adventure. But from what I've seen online there doesn't seem to be a sequel in the works. 

Now the piece of the book I was most excited about was to really get to see what made Belle and the Beast such an amazing couple. I mean in a book that is almost 500 pages long we had to get an in-depth look at the characters. But in that regards I was disappointed. I learned a little more about Belle as a person. And good amount more about the Beast's past. But I didn't romantically ship them. I didn't find myself hoping they'd get together...I would have been just as happy to see them shake hands and go there separate ways. That was something that disappointed me to no ends because they are such an iconic Disney couple. 

Overall I rated this book a 3.75 out of 5. It was very close to making it to 4 stars but the slow start and the lack of romantic connection between the leads did hurt it in my ratings. With that being said I know everyone has their own taste so I would recommend this book to people who like fantasy or fairy tale novels and someone with an open mind when it comes to telling the story in a different way. Although I WOULD NOT recommend this book to anyone who is a big fan of Disney's Beauty and the Beast and who wouldn't want to see the story change. 

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Have you read As Old as Time? If so, did you enjoy it? How would you rate it? Let me know in the comments down below.