Beast

Charming, Book 2

If you go down to the woods today …

Former con artist Jean-Marc Charming Arundel—Prince Charming, to his friends—has an appointment to keep with a demon. Travelling through an ancient woodland haunted by wolves and bears, he flees a sudden storm into a beautiful mansion. There, he finds himself an unwilling guest of a fearsome beast: a noblewoman transformed by a fairy curse, as much a prisoner in the house as he.

Charming and his two fellow “guests,” Johannes and Wilhelm, must attend on the Beast in strangely romantic settings—reading books by the fire, picnicking in a menagerie, a formal dinner—for which they are rewarded with mysterious gifts of red roses. But to what end? And when will they be freed? The clock is ticking, and more than just his own life depends on it …

©2025 Rebellion Publishing IP Ltd. (P)2025 Recorded Books

Charming, if confusing, reverse Beauty & Beast

I enjoyed this more than book 1 thanks in large part to liking the MCs more. Prince Charming from book 1 gets his redemption arc amid a reverse Beauty and the Beast tale, not to mention amid mashups from a host of other fairytales. Sometimes the fairytale twists worked; oftentimes, it felt like someone challenged the author to squeeze in as many fairytales as possible, resulting in a quantity versus quality conundrum. In the end, with all the head-scratching, fairytale curveballs, this book suffered from the same length, and oddly quick wrap-up, issues that wore me down in book 1.