A CURSE OF BEASTS AND MAGIC by Jeanine Frost is billed as a Beauty and the Beast retelling, but with a twist.  Here, it’s the heroine who is literally carrying a Beast inside of her, and the Beauty is the hero.  It’s a fun concept to have that flip in this dark romantasy.

Raine Stone is a young woman who survived an attack that killed the rest of her family.  As a result of that attack, she’s been inhabited by a beast that feeds on violence and chaos.  Raine keeps the Beast on a leash (with difficulty!) by her nightly vigilantism, going out on the streets and taking down those who would harm innocents.  I love that Raine also uses the power that the Beasts garners from feeding off evildoers in her daytime work as an ER nurse, funneling the beastly energy inside to heal those in need.  She’s like the Robin Hood of violence, which is a fun concept.

Raine is just minding her own business and living her life as a secret crime fighter when she crosses paths with Remington Byrne, or Remy.  Remy is a powerful Warden who is charged with guarding the gates between realms, and one of his greatest enemies is the Beasts, like the one inside Raine.  Sexy Remy knows that Raine’s Beast contains power that could tip the scales his way in a sinister plot against Remy’s rule, though, if she allies with him.  This sets up the forced proximity trope, with Remy proposing a fake dating scenario.

Frost’s tropes in A CURSE OF BEASTS AND MAGIC also include enemies-to-lovers (one of my favorites).  Both Raine and Remy are somewhat morally ambiguous, and I usually really dig the antihero in a good book.  There’s a lot going on in this book, though, and I found it a bit hard to settle down into the storyline with all of the distracting bits going on around the main theme.

Old and new fans of Frost’s work alike may be charmed by the ubercharged world of good and evil. This dark fantasy offers never-ending thrills with a twisty plot.  A CURSE OF BEASTS AND MAGIC is a fast-paced urban fantasy with plenty of magical action, lots of sexy times, and a cliffhanger ending.