by Emma Theriault. Pub date 11.10.2020
4.5 Stars! Best enjoyed when you want a bit of your history to have some fairy tale in it.
The Queen’s Council promises to be a fantastic series if you’re like me and you love not only fairy tales, but the origins and history that come along with them. The first book in the series tackles the subject of Beauty and the Beast.
Rebel Rose takes place during the French Revolution in 1789, shortly after the curse of the Beast has been broken and Aveyon has been freed from the magic of the enchantress. As Prince Lio and Belle start their new lives together, they journey to Paris to reunite with Lio’s cousin Bastien, Duc de Vincennes, to take his place back at court. Belle is extremely excited to see Paris and explore it as she and her father once did long before. As she is still a commoner and has not taken a title, she is allowed to roam free. However, as Lio and Belle arrive in Paris, there is an undercurrent of tension running through the city as the starving commoners rebel against the nobility of France, who has taxed them to the point of poverty and their bellies go hungry. After witnessing a horrifying event in the streets of Paris, Belle feels that she must use her unique position as a commoner married to nobility to try and help the people of Aveyon from suffering the same fate, and Bastien decides to join them. However, something isn’t quite right with Bastien and Belle cannot decide if he is just the frivolous nobleman that he shows to the world, or if he has sympathy for the revolutionaries. AS the story unfolds, Belle begins to question her decisions and must stop the plot that is threatening Lio and his subjects before the tide of revolution can reach Aveyon and destroy everything they’ve ever known.
I had this arc in my pocket for awhile before picking it up, and I truly regret not reading it sooner. I love stories like this, the ones that take fairy tales and put them into their time period. It makes the world feel a little more magical. Also, because no one else knows about the curse except those that were a part of it, there was a level of camaraderie and a good explanation for why all of the characters see the world differently than those around them and why they aren’t tied to the tropes of other commoners and noblemen.
The characters were well written for the most part, although I would have liked to see a little more depth in Lio. He felt very flat. I did enjoy reading a story from the point of view of a married woman who loved her husband. It allowed the stories to be more about the event but still added a romance factor that showed the different side of life and what love is really like rather than just the angst of lust. Belle as also very mama bear with all of the people she cared about, even the villagers who used to make fun of her before she married Lio, and all of our favorite characters like Mrs. Potts, Chip, Lumiere, and Cogsworth were present.
Overall, I am grateful to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for bringing this lovely ARC to my library in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own and were gladly given.
Always Lost in Words 