Beauty

"Robin McKinley is one of my favourite writers, because I love her style. It’s not like I stop and say, oh my goodness, that was such a clever thing that she wrote there. It is that it’s effortless. The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown , too, are my other favourites by her. Beauty takes a fairy tale that we’ve heard so many times and seen in so many formats, and it re-tells it in a way that is super understandable. It’s very familiar, and the situation in which she finds herself is not because “her evil sisters wished her into it”, or anything like that. It’s a thing that befalls her – it’s a way to save her family. And her relationship with the beast, as it progresses, is very understandable. Sometimes in a fairy tale, when we’re just told the bones of the story, we have to fill in what we think happened. Robin McKinley does a lovely job of filling in the details and the emotions, and the things that would make a young woman fall in love with a beast. Again, I don’t want to do spoilers, because I think everybody deserves to have that experience fresh the first time they go to it. So I think that’s all I’ll say about it! In any Robin McKinley book you can pick up, I think you’re going to find a worthwhile read to devote your time to. She just is an amazing writer."