The Servants and the Beast

by R.A. Gates, Karen Blakely, Kelly Haworth

You think you know the story – prince gets cursed, girl meets Beast, they fall in love and live happily ever after. If only it was that simple. But dating is tough even in the best of circumstances.


Ever since the fateful day when we let that horrible Good Fairy into the castle, our lives have been on hold. When she turned our bad-tempered prince into a Beast, she lumped us, his loyal servants, into the curse too, just because she assumed his rude behavior was our fault. Theodore the butler should never have opened the door to her, and the rest of us should have helped keep her out.


Now Theodore is an armchair, and we're all trying to carry on our duties as a piano, a coat rack, a bookcase and the like. At least we have Robert to clean up the pink sparkles piling in the corners from the Good Fairy's curse, since he’s a mop now. We know we just need the Beast to fall in love to break the spell. We're all doing whatever we can to help him find True Love, one visitor at a time, hoping the right person finally comes along--but will the Beast ever learn to love?

146 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 28, 2019

About the author

A single mother of 3, I love reading urban fantasy, especially young adult. The characters are less jaded and the romances are usually include the excitement of first loves. I decided to write the urban fantasy story that I wanted to read most, which includes a strong female protagonist, a believable and slow building romance and a dynamic villain. I hope I succeeded.

Reviews

[R.A. Gates]

Excited to announce that the ebook will be on sale for only $0.99 on Sunday, 9-22-19, only on Amazon. Don't miss your chance to snag this deal. The authors will also be hosting a fabulous Facebook event from 1-3pm PST to celebrate. So join us to win some prizes and ask the authors any burning questions about the book, how we all worked together to get it done, or anything else! Can't wait to see you there!

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light, enjoyable romp through a well-worn fairy tale, with enough new wrinkles to keep things interesting. I felt that the novella's length and shifting perspectives was a bit of a detriment, being that it largely kept us away from the Beast's emotional transformation. Also, some chapters were not as well written as others, that being the nature of a collaborative project. However, I still had a lot of fun with this book. Especially when it came to its sweet, romantic ending, taking the well-known story into a welcomingly different direction. Though you could argue that the broad strokes of the story aren't too different from the one we know, there is something to be said for comforting familiarity. It won't change the world, but that's okay. Sometimes you just need something sweet.

[P.L. Jonas · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful book! Thoroughly enjoyed the unique perspectives written by different authors and how the stories were interwoven. A fun twist on a familiar story. Well done!

[Jayde Holmes · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but it took a while for me to get into it. As a history buff, I never really got the sense that this story was taking place in medieval or 1800s or whenever France. I felt like it was in the Disney cartoon version of the world instead, which once I got that into my head wasn't too bad. It would have been nice to see more of how the servants interactions with each other and with the Beast change over time. As it is, the Beast's character development seems to happen mostly off screen, and we are only shown the results.

That all being said, this is still a fun little story. The ending is super sweet and also quite action packed. And it's interesting seeing the struggles and concerns of people turned into furniture. This story should be quite entertaining to anyone who likes strange fairy tale retellings or fans of the Beauty and the Beast story. Also This is a queer romance retelling. I want to say that in the review because I know there is an audience for queer fairy tales who would love to hear about this book, but the Beast ending up with a man is a plot twist, so I don't know the best way to hint at it.

One minor technical thing, my kindle couldn't display the image files for the section breaks or the photos in the 'more books by these authors' page. I can't tell if that's just a problem on my end, or if it is something that was missed during formatting and publication.

[L B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was super fun. I love fairy tale retellings with a twist. I took away one star because a format change would have helped a lot -- when the narrator changes to another character, I wish each chapter heading had reflected that.