Magical library.
Distorted fairy tales.
Time travel.
Bookworm Bellarose, egotistical Gerard, geeky Quinn, and mysterious Elayne are thrust into a fairy tale through a magical library. The problem? Most of these eighteen-year-olds’ memories have been wiped clean of life before they became characters in a familiar, but twisted story.
For anyone who is bold enough to read fairy tales and brave enough to believe in redemption.
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” ~ C.S. Lewis
From riches to rags, from France to Louisiana, from hope to heartbreak—Bellarose Bonnay has lost everything. But her greatest adventure is just beginning.
Bellarose and the Beast is book one in Carla Reighard’s interconnected fairy tale universe, The Aerowyn Tales, weaving together the threads of multiple beloved tales in a richly imagined YA fantasy series.
Bellarose Bonnay’s world shattered the day her father lost everything. Stripped of her aristocratic life in France, she arrives in New Orleans as an orphan with nothing but heartbreak and two precious books. When an old woman directs her to Rose Manor, Bella expects to beg for work as a servant. Instead, she discovers an impossible secret: the plantation exists under a powerful enchantress’s curse.
Each twilight, magic transforms the abandoned manor into breathtaking elegance. Servants trapped as candlesticks, clocks, and furniture become human for mere hours. Most shocking of all, Antoine de la Rose—master of the estate and twin to the arrogant war hero Gerard—spends his days as a savage wolf. The enchantress Aerowyn gave him one chance: find unselfish love before his nineteenth birthday, or remain a beast forever. With only weeks remaining, everyone’s fate hangs in the balance.
As Bella helps plan a grand ball to break the curse, she finds herself caught between worlds: the unlikely friendship she’s forging with Gerard, her growing feelings for Quinn (a disfigured stable boy with a gentle heart), and her desperate hope to save the household from eternal enchantment. But when jealousy, magic, and misunderstanding collide on the night of the ball, someone will have to make the ultimate sacrifice. In this lush retelling where beauty lies beneath the surface and beasts wear many faces, true love demands a price no one expects to pay.
Check out Goodreads to see what readers are saying about Bellarose and the Beast.
Only kisses, no swearing, war scenes with blood, character that suffers PTSD, bar with mention of alcohol, characters given sleeping drug, unsolicited bum smack.
Bellarose and the Beast came about when someone on Instagram asked why there weren’t any Gaston retellings from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. At the time there weren’t any so Carla wrote a book named Gerard, rebranded as Bellarose and the Beast, book one of The Aerowyn Tales where villains receive second chances and each villain has a backstory to show why they went to the dark side.
There are several “beasts” in The Aerowyn Tales that are not necessarily monsters with fur. These stories are meant to show the best and worst of mankind and that even if you can’t choose what happens to you. You can choose how to react.
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