Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable....
Review: "Beast" was really a sweet book...The story was charming and different. The characters were refreshing as well..Louise in particular..she isnt exactly what one would call "likeable"...she grows on you slowly..I'll admit that I was rooting for Charles throughout this book..not Louise..but in the end, they both win. All in all..not quite a "MUST READ"..but definitely a pleasurable way to spend the day.
Rating: 
Summary: Really tried to give it a chance but...
Review: (...)This book left me frustrated in so many ways, I'm not sure where to begin. Unlike most of the reviewers here, I preferred the second half of the book to the first because I almost couldn't stand reading what seemed an unending account of Louise falling in love with part lie part self-created fantasy. Some may have thought it romantic that she never saw Charles and yet fell for him, but given that this is a girl bored with life, it seemed she fell for the slightly forbidden idea of sex with a foreigner as well as someone who didn't seem to care that much about her appearances, the latter being especially untrue given Charles' constant and tiresome adoration of Louise's beauty. Hey, it's nice to know the hero thinks the heroine is pretty, but especially since the whole point of this book was supposed to be about looking beyond the outer facade, I could have done with about 20 *less* pages devoted to worshipping Louise's physical perfection. My next big problem with this book was that it wasted so many pages on verbose descriptions of settings and Louise's glowing skin, and hastily skimmed over all the parts that really needed more attention:
1. After Charles and Louise are married, things are tense between them, mostly because Louise finds Charles hideous. Charles is restricted to kissing Louise's glorious wrists--but not too many times or he'll get a whack with her trusty fan. Then suddenly, out of the blue, in a scene on the beach, Louise admits that she is "fond of his appearance" and thinks she might even love Charles. Huh? When did that happen? Maybe time has passed and things have happened that the reader is not privvy to, but I thought the whole point of a love story is to *show* two people falling in love, not tell us after it's happpened. I wanted to see Charles wooing Louise, but this time showing her every part of his true self, and I wanted to see Louise falling in love with the true Charles.
2. After discovering the truth about Charles' horrible deceit, Louise gets over it in about half a page and I couldn't believe this, especially since I could hardly come to grips with the fact that Louise was suddenly in love with Charles again. 3. It is implied that Louise is intelligent, and what's more, she's desperate to find herself, to find worth in her life. But the author never gives her a chance, never allows her any satisfaction. The book ends with her still without any interests or passions, any desire to do anything. Charles in fact offers her a chance to try to apply herself, first as his accountant and then, at her request, as some kind of chemist creating artificial scents--she gives up quickly on both. The beginning of the book explains that Charles' dream is to come up with his own special perfume and I thought perhaps Louise and Charles could have worked together toward this, but this dream of Charles is left unfinished, not even begun really. While poor Louise never even finds a dream of her own.
Rating:
Summary: This was a first...
Review: ... and perhaps also the last I'll read by Judith Ivory. I'd heard great things about this book, so I made sure to buy it. This is also a first in that I couldn't stand either the hero or the heroine. Ivory tried to make Charles' vanity endearing... I found it repugnant because he does not try (at least try!) to rise above it. Ivory didn't even do that much for Louise. She was vain and proud of it, certain she deserved only the most attractive physical specimen the world had to offer. Both Charles and Louise were also petty and selfish. Louise was a spoiled teenager and so was Charles at heart. Maybe the two deserved each other, but I definitely didn't want to read about it. Beyond that, the plot was stilted and boring. We never find out how Charles happened to get on the exact same ship as Louise, or when he agreed to her parents' proposal of marriage to their daughter. It was annoying to have the story interrupted by so many parenthetical comments by Ivory. Did we really need to interrupt the story with a parenthetical aside to find out that Charles' stateroom could fit fifty or sixty people? Couldn't we assume that a French prince would travel luxuriously? And what was the point of all those excerpts from Charles' writing on ambergris? It's the same technique that Jayne Ann Krentz has used in some of her novels. Whichever one of them came up with it, it's something I'd rather not see spread, as it does nothing for the story. All in all, BEAST was a terrible disappointment. Since I guess it's really not fair to judge an author on the basis of just one book, I may give Ivory a second chance, but it will be awhile before I do.
Rating:
Summary: 0 stars if I could...
Review: ... I have rarely disliked a heroine as much as Louise, a much sought after beauty, who must go off to Europe and marry a disfigured, famously ugly Charles. I thought it was sort of creepy to fool Louise by always being in the dark. ... And, again, I found nothing likeable about Louise. Perhaps a romance with an 18 year old girl who really behaves more like a 14 year old was a bit immature for me. After all, I am 31 years old...
Rating: 
Summary: A deeply sensuous, beautifully crafted love story...
Review: BEAST is a terrifically intelligent, terrifically sensuous book, one that explores not only how love begins but what makes it deepen and last. And it's also just a flat out great story...fast, sexy, and exciting. PS: I just got hold of an ARC for Ivory's next book, SLEEPING BEAUTY, and it's as beautiful as BEAST. Nobody writes to provoke both the senses and the mind like Ivory.
Rating:
Summary: Beast is an absolute MUST for lovers of the genre.
Review: Beauty and the Beast has long been my favourite fairy tale -- still, I was curious to know how Ms. Ivory could possibly put the magic into a story told and re-told in such endless and varied combinations. Yet she wove the tale of Charles and Louise with such skill and insight I was caught up in the "magic" from page one. Of particular interest to me was her well-researched commentary on the uses of Ambergris and Jasmine, and the figurative parallellism of these essences to Charles and Louise, respectively. Clever, clever girl! Do give us another Beast like Charles d'Harcourt -- he was thoroughly, absolutely, painfully lovable.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book!
Review: Charles and Louise are on the same ship. They are engaged to be married. As Charles discovers Louise, he decides to disguise himself. They will have a shipboard romance, that develops into something more. BEAST is Charles, I suppose. Injured and slightly disfigured, he as gone through his adulthood proving himself through his work and his sexuality. Louise, a beauty, has felt that no one really sees her, including herself. She is too beautiful, too young, and has become arrogant, and somewhat selfish. As she learns to love Charles, she finds herself. As Charles romances Louise, he will forget about his lack of physical beauty. The problems in their relationship will occur when Louise marries the "real" Charles, not knowing he is "her" Charles from the ship. A "big misunderstanding", to say the least. But, as a plot device, it works really well in Judith Ivory's BEAST. Funny, sad, sexy, and romantic, all define this wonderful book. Beautiful prose, and a unique storyline make this a book worth reading and keeping.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book!
Review: Charles and Louise are on the same ship. They are engaged to be married. As Charles discovers Louise, he decides to disguise himself. They will have a shipboard romance, that develops into something more. BEAST is Charles, I suppose. Injured and slightly disfigured, he as gone through his adulthood proving himself through his work and his sexuality. Louise, a beauty, has felt that no one really sees her, including herself. She is too beautiful, too young, and has become arrogant, and somewhat selfish. As she learns to love Charles, she finds herself. As Charles romances Louise, he will forget about his lack of physical beauty. The problems in their relationship will occur when Louise marries the "real" Charles, not knowing he is "her" Charles from the ship. A "big misunderstanding", to say the least. But, as a plot device, it works really well in Judith Ivory's BEAST. Funny, sad, sexy, and romantic, all define this wonderful book. Beautiful prose, and a unique storyline make this a book worth reading and keeping.
Rating:
Summary: Warm, touching, human, humane.
Review: I can't disagree enough with the reviewer just below. Beast is a warm, humane portrait of romance, eros, love, and the way that partnership with another human can help us live with our insecurities and work to overcome our human foibles -- all cloaked in a delicious romance. I adore romance novels, and I love and respect them when they're able to teach as well as delight. This is one such novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Questionable read.......
Review: I finished it, but did I enjoy it?....yes and no. Their sightless embraces were breathtaking, their darkened relationship, perfection. But in the light of day, Louise never comes to love her beast. She was supposed to love this man given all his flaws and hideous scars and up until the very end of the story, the reader never feels that love (nor does he, I might add). She's so busy putting him down, refusing his touch and criticizing his disability (if you can believe that one!)
There were actually little secrets that only her and her mysterious lover would recognize....the black pearls, the scent of his soap, his accent when he spoke English.....and not one of them reappeared to give her hints as to who he really was--except for the pearls, which she rips off her body in a torrent of tears for they bring her lover to mind.
Basically, she's in love with her mysterious man for more than 3/4's of the book. She doesn't love the beast until literally the last page--good for him, bad for us.
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