Book review: Bitterburn - Ann Aquirre
Bitterburn is a great Beauty and the Beast retelling and you should read it immediately if you like:
Gothic romance
Subverted fairytales
Slow burn
Cinnamon roll monster boyfriend! (no transformation from beast here)
Strong female lead
Dude in distress
Sexy sex and consent
Due to increasingly longer bitter winters, the village of Bitterburn is in danger of starving and is unable to send its tribute to the Beast in his frozen Keep at the End of the World. Our heroine, Amarrah, has lost the only man she ever loved and decides she has nothing left to live for in the village so she volunteers as tribute to keep the Beast at bay. Njål, the Beast of Bitterburn, is cursed to never leave the castle and to never die. He’s lost all hope until the castle allows Amarrah inside. Njål has been cursed for tragically different reasons than the Disney Beast and he’s also very different in appearance. Amarrah is smart, resourceful, and funny. Needless to say, this is not your Disneyfied fairytale and thanks to some well-written monster smashing, definitely not for kids. I only had one small nitpick: occasional anachronistic language. This standalone book is the first of Ann’s Gothic Fairytales series, with the next one coming out on October 31, 2021. Content warnings from the book include violence, dark magic, death, and mentions of torture (off-page).
