Rating: 
Summary: Hauntingly beautiful
Review: I loved this beautifully written "reality" romance. Today's romance novels focus too much on external beauty and not enough on internal beauty. I've been reading romance novels for the past 20 years and frankly I'm getting bored with the too perfect babes and hunks. Here is a novel filled with emotion, strong characters and real issues. It doesn't have the typical romance "happy ending," but the story will stay with you forever and you'll be glad you read it. I recommend Hawkes Cove as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Nearly perfect
Review: I really admire her writing style. The words have a lot of emotion and honesty in them and I like that. This book is a must have for any Phantom Phan, just be prepared for light reading and tears. I wish the book was longer... It was so tasteful and filled with a charm that made you want to read more. I fell in love with Lee, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Too depressing
Review: I tried to like this book, there was the beginning of a good story line. The problem was that she decided to add the last part of the book, and the charctors never really seemed to be passionate about each other. I would not recommend this book if you like happy endings, like I do.
Rating:
Summary: Too depressing
Review: I tried to like this book, there was the beginning of a good story line. The problem was that she decided to add the last part of the book, and the charctors never really seemed to be passionate about each other. I would not recommend this book if you like happy endings, like I do.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best retelling of the B&B...emotionally unsatisfying
Review: I've been hooked on retellings of the Beauty/Beast tale for years. I hunt down, seek out and snap up anything that smacks of a retelling. That's why when I saw this title and read the blurb, I rushed to the checkout with this little book.The ingredients were there--hero with facial deformity, lovely heroine who grows to love the ugly man with a heart of gold, an isolated setting. What was missing were really good heartfelt scenes between Alix and Lee (the B &B). I kept feeling that I was being cheated of the deepest moments of emotion--the passion of the beauty for the beast and vice versa. There is a certain coolness in the telling, like the wintry countryside, and it left me...wanting. For hard-core B&B aficionados, I say you might as well read it, but don't expect everything to end lovely and beautifully with a HEA. Just enjoy another version of our fave tale. BTW, if you haven't read Charlotte Vale Allen's NIGHT MAGIC, there's a wonderful B&B retelling with correlation to Phantom of the Opera. I believe it's still in print. Mir
Rating:
Summary: Fans of Beauty and the Beast will love this!
Review: In this modern take on Beauty and the Beast artist Alix Miller is hired to paint wealthy recluse Leland Crompton. Alix is shocked to learn that Leland suffers from a physical deformity but she soon learns to overlook it. The two become friends but when Alix realizes she's in love with Leland she has a hard time convincing him her feelings are real. I'm a [fan of] Beauty and the Beast so I , of course, loved this book. The characters and plot were engrossing and fit well with the Beauty and the Beast theme. The writing was very good considering this is a romance novel but there was a couple of really cheesy lines in every chapter. I also hated the ending. I'm sure the author was trying to make some sort of statement with it but it wasn't really necessary. Overall this book is wonderful, I'll just skip the end if I decide to re-read it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Stuff That TV Movies are made on
Review: Lovely descriptions but otherwise depressing romance about disfigured Beast and questionable Beauty. Story should have ended before the 'Beast' takes over the narration; this flaws the overall structure of the novel by giving it a convenient rather rushed ending where the main character dies of childbirth and the 'Beast' reaffirms the old saw that 'no man is an island'. Three snores and a beer can!
Rating:
Summary: No "Beauty"
Review: Reworking a fairy tale is tricky business, especially when it's set in the modern world without magic. And "Beauty," Susan Wilson's limp, colorless reworking of "Beauty and the Beast," is a failure as a fairy-tale retelling, because it lacks magic. More specifically, it lacks the magic of good writing. Alix Miller arrives in New Hampshire paint the portrait of Leland Crompton, a reclusive writer who only communicates via computer. When Alix arrives, she learns why he's a recluse: Leland is disfigured by a rare disease called acromegaly (also called "Elephant Man's Disease"), and so he uses his detective alter ego to live the public life he can't. Despite already being in a relationship with hunky, well-off Mark, Alix starts to fall in love with Leland despite his outward deformities. But long years of loneliness and being shunned make Leland think that she can't possibly want to be with him. Can Alix dump her worthless boyfriend for the guy she really loves? And can Wilson resist the urge to give the book a gratuitous weeper ending? A modern "Beauty and the Beast," complete with the Beast's emotional hangups? Nope, doesn't work. Susan Wilson turns a classic fairy tales into a prosaic, predictable, plain-vanilla romance weeper. Take some boring dialogue, boring characters, a predictable storyline and a mess of scientific inaccuracies (related to acromegaly) and you have a recipe for a disastrous retelling. Wilson tries to maintain the fairy-tale atmosphere with the forbidding house and mystery recluse. But it dies when Leland comes onto the scene; it becomes a predictable emotional tug-o-war between Susan and her two lovers. It's painfully obvious what her decision is going to be, and the plodding, cliched dialogue between the two reluctant soulmates only makes the trip seem longer. What's more, Wilson's style is simply too dull. There's no sparkle or magic to her writing. She tries to spice things up with a gratuitously tragic ending, that merely turns it into a cheap melodrama, but by that time readers will find it hard to care what happens to Alix or Leland. Alix is an uninteresting heroine, especially since she doesn't seem very bright. Why did she get involved with Mark in the first place, since he's a jerk who just seems to use her as a sex toy? Leland is an uncompelling character, since he seems rather social and outgoing for a shunned recluse. And Mark... what else need be said? Wilson apparently cannot write well enough to give Leland a decent rival. Some writers like Jane Yolen can give modern spins on old fairy tales, without losing that hint of magic. It eludes Susan Wilson in the un-beautiful "Beauty," a soppy, weepy mess of a retelling.
Rating:
Summary: No "Beauty"
Review: Reworking a fairy tale is tricky business, especially when it's set in the modern world without magic. And "Beauty," Susan Wilson's limp, colorless reworking of "Beauty and the Beast," is a failure as a fairy-tale retelling, because it lacks magic. More specifically, it lacks the magic of good writing. Alix Miller arrives in New Hampshire paint the portrait of Leland Crompton, a reclusive writer who only communicates via computer. When Alix arrives, she learns why he's a recluse: Leland is disfigured by a rare disease called acromegaly (also called "Elephant Man's Disease"), and so he uses his detective alter ego to live the public life he can't. Despite already being in a relationship with hunky, well-off Mark, Alix starts to fall in love with Leland despite his outward deformities. But long years of loneliness and being shunned make Leland think that she can't possibly want to be with him. Can Alix dump her worthless boyfriend for the guy she really loves? And can Wilson resist the urge to give the book a gratuitous weeper ending? A modern "Beauty and the Beast," complete with the Beast's emotional hangups? Nope, doesn't work. Susan Wilson turns a classic fairy tales into a prosaic, predictable, plain-vanilla romance weeper. Take some boring dialogue, boring characters, a predictable storyline and a mess of scientific inaccuracies (related to acromegaly) and you have a recipe for a disastrous retelling. Wilson tries to maintain the fairy-tale atmosphere with the forbidding house and mystery recluse. But it dies when Leland comes onto the scene; it becomes a predictable emotional tug-o-war between Susan and her two lovers. It's painfully obvious what her decision is going to be, and the plodding, cliched dialogue between the two reluctant soulmates only makes the trip seem longer. What's more, Wilson's style is simply too dull. There's no sparkle or magic to her writing. She tries to spice things up with a gratuitously tragic ending, that merely turns it into a cheap melodrama, but by that time readers will find it hard to care what happens to Alix or Leland. Alix is an uninteresting heroine, especially since she doesn't seem very bright. Why did she get involved with Mark in the first place, since he's a jerk who just seems to use her as a sex toy? Leland is an uncompelling character, since he seems rather social and outgoing for a shunned recluse. And Mark... what else need be said? Wilson apparently cannot write well enough to give Leland a decent rival. Some writers like Jane Yolen can give modern spins on old fairy tales, without losing that hint of magic. It eludes Susan Wilson in the un-beautiful "Beauty," a soppy, weepy mess of a retelling.
Rating:
Summary: Poor
Review: Superficial and shallow characters. Dull plot. Crummy ending. There's no beauty in this story
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