I shouldn’t bother, because it will all be gone in an hour anyway, but I hate this. The ice-cold water bites at my skin, but the blood clings. I thrust my hands into the barrel beside the stables. I wonder how many of my people I’ve killed this time. Ages 13 up.There is blood under my fingernails.

This enthralling modern fable champions altruism while illustrating intimacy's relationship with honesty, respect, trust, and consent. Harper and Rhen share the narration, building an alliance while fighting their burgeoning romance, and artfully rendered, emotionally complex secondary characters add depth and raise stakes. Harper has no intention of being wooed and plans to negotiate with Lilith for passage home, but after she discovers that a ruthless queen plans to invade Emberfall, she begins to reconsider. Afterward, the castle grounds reset, and Grey secures Rhen another potential mate. Every three months, unless he finds love, Rhen becomes a monster who kills indiscriminately.

She awakes at Ironrose Castle in Emberfall, where a vengeful enchantress, Lilith, has cursed Prince Rhen and his guard, Commander Grey, to continually relive the autumn of Rhen's 18th year. Harper, a high school senior with cerebral palsy, gets abducted while trying to thwart a kidnapping in Washington, D.C. and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.Īction, tension, and tragedy fuel this retelling of 'Beauty and the Beast' by YA author Kemmerer (More Than We Can Tell). But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But as she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what's at stake. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she's instead somehow sucked into Rhen's cursed world.Ī prince? A monster? A curse? Harper doesn't know where she is or what to believe.

With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. In a lush, contemporary fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Brigid Kemmerer gives readers another compulsively readable romance perfect for fans of Marissa Meyer. 'Has everything you'd want in a retelling of a classic fairy tale.' - Jodi Picoult

A curse so dark and lonely book