Harper and Rhen’s relationship is interesting because it’s not necessarily hate-to-love. There are also other characters folded into the storyline and outside forces at play, meaning things don’t feel quite so isolated. Grey is stuck in the curse alongside Rhen and while he’s definitely a likable character, he’s not there for comic relief. For instance, while there are some eerie patterns from day to day, you won’t find any talking candlesticks, clocks, or dishware at this castle. Thankfully though, the novel doesn’t lean super heavily on the story we grew up with.
If you’re suspecting that A Curse So Dark And Lonely is a take on Beauty and the Beast, you’re 100 percent right. With a neighboring army practically knocking down Emberfall’s front door, failing means dooming his kingdom. When Rhen turns into a monster at the end of the season, he’ll stay that way permanently. The sorceress Lilith, who cursed him long ago, has declared it his last. When he’s still his true self, he hides in the castle, neglecting his people and wallowing in shame. Each season, Rhen tries and fails to make the young woman in question fall in love with him… and in his failure, he transforms into a bloodthirsty monster and kills his own people in droves. Each season, his loyal Commander Grey brings a new young woman from an alternate dimension to the castle. Rhen is the crown prince of Emberfall, cursed on his eighteenth birthday. When she intervenes, she finds herself taken instead.
Her brother has been forced into the loan shark’s employment and Harper is serving as his lookout on the night she sees it: A young man trying to kidnap a woman on the streets of DC. Her father has disappeared, leaving the rest of the family to deal with the serious debt to a loan shark he accrued while trying to cover her dying mother’s medical bills. Harper is a teen with Cerebral Palsy who’s not had it easy in life besides. I’d fallen off the fairy tale retelling hype train, I don’t know the author’s previous work well, and I was convinced deep down that despite the mountains of praise I’ve seen online, maybe this one wasn’t for me. I have a confession to make: Even though I was super pumped to have scored an ARC of Brigid Kemmerer’s A Curse So Dark And Lonely, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.
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