Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon Book Review

“If he was going to die, he was going to die happy and in love, damn it.”

(pg. 289)

About

Author: Sandhya Menon

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Series: St. Rosetta’s Academy Book 1

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Synopsis

Will the princess save the beast?

For Princess Jaya Rao, nothing is more important than family. When the loathsome Emerson clan steps up their centuries-old feud to target Jaya’s little sister, nothing will keep Jaya from exacting her revenge. Then Jaya finds out she’ll be attending the same elite boarding school as Grey Emerson, and it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. She knows what she must do: Make Grey fall in love with her and break his heart. But much to Jaya’s annoyance, Grey’s brooding demeanor and lupine blue eyes have drawn her in. There’s simply no way she and her sworn enemy could find their fairy-tale ending…right?

His Lordship Grey Emerson is a misanthrope. Thanks to an ancient curse by a Rao matriarch, Grey knows he’s doomed once he turns eighteen. Sequestered away in the mountains at St. Rosetta’s International Academy, he’s lived an isolated existence—until Jaya Rao bursts into his life, but he can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something. Something that might just have to do with the rose-shaped ruby pendant around her neck…

As the stars conspire to keep them apart, Jaya and Grey grapple with questions of love, loyalty, and whether it’s possible to write your own happy ending.

Review

Spoilers Contained Below

To the Beauties and the Beasts,

I Love Love Love Sandhya Menon books, I genuinely do. So I loved loved loved it when I heard she was writing a new type of book for a series (the St. Rosetta Academy series). I also loved the idea of a fairytale retelling because who doesn’t love a good fairytale? 💜

I really appreciated all the Beauty and the Beast parallels with the characters and how well Sandhya uses her words to create this image of who is who. You could tell right from the start that Grey was the Beast because of his lupine eyes and his bearish, beastly nature. It really highlighted the point that he was the Beast, but he was actually a boy. I also loved how Sandhya made Belle diverse by making her a strong Indian woman named Jaya. Jaya had Belle qualities with her love of reading and her passion for wanting to travel the world someday, which I thought it was really cute that Sandhya kept that in. I like how headstrong and determined Jaya was. The only thing that I would say was vastly different about Jaya and Belle was to me, Belle seemed more demure and soft, while Jaya was more inquisitive and bold. Jaya was never afraid to speak her mind or to give a little sass. Sure, Belle in the live action had a bit more personality with being bolder, but Jaya gave me bigger than life vibes and I was here for it. I also loved how Sandhya made Jaya a sister.

Jaya is a princess, the heir to the Rao line. She has a younger sister named Isha who is into robotic engineering and hanging with the guys. As part of the royal line, it would be seen as uncouth to be into engineering and to hang out with other boys because apparently people have these ideas that just because a young teen likes freaking engineering, that she would be unfit to the throne and the Rao’s are unsuitable. UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. If I knew Isha loved robotic engineering and I knew she was a Rao, I would be honored to have possibly a future, female, empowered, tech-loving person on the throne to my country 👏🏼!!! POP OFF ISHA! And I really didn’t see how it was ANYONE’S business to judge a FREAKING KID about what she loved to do. How and why does that even matter?☹️ It made me furious.

Photos of Isha hanging out with a bunch of her robotic friends and even kissing one leaked and it “ruined” the Rao name. Personally, I think people were making such a big deal out of nothing. Mind your own beeswax! I mean, do you really have nothing better to do than gossip about a 15 year old who’s building things you can’t even do and that she has a love life? Don’t be jealous people 🤪. It hurt my heart that she had to be sent to St. Rosetta’s so the rumor would die down. Later on another rumor spreads that Isha was pregnant, which was FREAKING BONKERS. I would just like to Socker Bop anyone in the head who believed that obvious lie.

Jaya believed that it was the Emerson’s, specifically Grey Emerson, who started the rumor of Isha.

It would make sense given their family history. In the past, the Emerson’s stole a sacred ruby from the Rao’s family and the Mysuru temple where they ruled. In retaliation, Jaya’s great-great-grandmother cursed the ruby and said that the ruby would be the last of the Emerson line. The ruby was never returned by the Emerson’s, instead they sold it around and Jaya’s father purchased it in Dubai when he was on a trip and Jaya asked for him to bring him back a rose. Instead, he bought her the ruby rose necklace—-the cursed necklace—-because it was something that would last. I also enjoyed this parallel with the significance of the rose in the original Beauty and the Beast because instead of a rose being kept under a bell jar, it was encapsulated as a pendant that she wore around her neck.

Suffice to say, the Rao’s and the Emerson’s had bad blood and have always had bad blood. Jaya called in to see who might have leaked the photos of Isha and the newsman said it was an “heir” so she assumed an Emerson. Part of Jaya going with Isha to St. Rosetta’s was to protect her, but also use her beauty to break Grey’s heart the way she ruined Isha’s life. Honestly, that was a really dumb plan 🤪. Sorry! But I get it, she’s beautiful and she should flaunt what her mama gave her, but honey, you breaking some boy’s heart whom you don’t even know, isn’t going to work because then what? Is that really going to make you feel better? Is that really going to fix anything? No. And how in the world did she think that she would just waltz right in and Grey wouldn’t know the very person from the family who cursed him? So the logistics of her plan working didn’t make sense to me when Grey would know and might had at least have some resentment or anger towards her and her family. And I also thought she was bonkers for switching all of her classes to match his. Coincidence, I think not!

The one thing I can’t say about Jaya was how much she loved and cared for her sister. Jaya was highly protective because of the rumor, which I understood. She just wanted to protect her sister from future hurt. But when doing so, Jaya came across as a helicopter sibling, always making sure Isha was okay, or that Isha was “following the rules,” or where Isha was at all times. It became really overbearing that even I felt the confines of what Isha was going through.

What made my heart hurt was how hard Jaya was on her sister. I understand that as an heir to the throne, she had more responsibility and more of an image to obtain more than Isha; there was more weight on Jaya’s shoulder. Ever since she was young, she knew she was destined to take over the throne, be the good older sibling, and be the obedient daughter. In a lot of ways it took away the childlike qualities of Jaya of being chill, free, or calm because she was always worrying how she looked to others, if she was following what her parents wanted, and all these things that didn’t put her first. I hurt for Jaya too because she was just a teen. Her parents should have given her space or should have talked to her about not feeling so pressured. It really felt like Jaya had a stick up her butt in the first half of the book because she was so uptight. She didn’t want Isha taking robotics because it wasn’t “princessy” or “feminine” or something and I just wanted to Booper Sock her in the head.

“Robotics engineering, flirting with that boy, dancing inappropriately. Why did Isha care so much about trivial things? Why couldn’t she just conform?”

(pg. 138)

There’s so many things wrong with that mindset 😲

Why did Isha care so much about trivial things? Honey, she’s 15, let her LIVE!! 🤪 She wants to dance, she wants to talk to boys, she wants to build, who are you to tell her otherwise?!

What really got to me was the last question: “Why couldn’t she conform?” Why couldn’t she conform? Are you joking me? That’s a joke, right! 😅 Jaya should really be asking herself why was she conforming to what everyone wants of her rather than bringing down her sister’s obvious happiness at being a kid. I understand Jaya, I truly do, but still, she needed to step back from feeling all this pressure as the oldest to really see that her sister was happy and that she should want her sister to do what she loved and to live as a kid. I think part of me felt like Jaya was angry or jealous that Isha could be so young, careless, and free—to do what she wanted—–because Jaya couldn’t do that. She was older so she had to know better and be better, not Isha.

Towards the end when Jaya felt really down, I loved how Isha knew she needed to be there for her sister. As complicated as their sister relationship was, they genuinely loved and cared about each other. Their relationship was very realistic to siblings dynamics.

“This is my problem. For far too long, you’ve taken on all my worries as your own, and it’s time to stop.”

(pg 346)

This was after the Homegoing dance and Jaya finally told Isha about the second rumor that swirled around about her. She also told Isha how she was marrying Kiran as part of the plan to take the attention off of Isha.

You know, one of the biggest things any book has taught me it’s this: FREAKING COMMUNICATION PEOPLE!!!!

If Jaya went to her sister and told her that there was another rumor about her going around in the first place, maybe the sister would have felt sad, but I know Isha, and she isn’t fine china, she would have helped Jaya find whoever started this rumor and take him down. Because that way, Jaya wouldn’t have called things off with Grey and then she wouldn’t have felt the need to marry freaking Kiran in the first place. Heck, the whole time, I kept thinking, Jaya, just tell Grey that someone started another rumor about your sister so he can help you find this sucker and take him down. Instead, she chose to keep everything to herself to hurt not only her heart, but Grey’s too. When things could have worked out better if she just FREAKING COMMUNICATED WHAT THE BADONKERS was going on!!!! 🤪 How hard is it to say “my sister is being bullied and I love you and I need your help to figure out whoever is doing this so I can be with you?”

BUT NOOOOOOOOOO.

Jaya wanted to be the savior of the story.

She wanted to save her sister the pain.

She wanted to save Grey the pain.

So she said, no let me marry Kiran and make it all better.

NOOOOOOOOO.

*****SIGH******

And the abba (the father) actually let’s her go through with this? Like excuse me? You want your daughter to sacrifice her FREAKING happiness to marry a swine because your family name is being tarnished by a ridiculous pregnancy rumor? 🙃 I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this kingdom was a catty middle school environment? 😆Seriously, a pregnancy rumor? If I was the abba, I would have been like, “how dare you believe that and if you speak out against my daughters again, I will charge you,” or something threatening because gosh gracious, you would think he would have more respect from his kingdom and his people that they wouldn’t believe something as dumb as a pregnancy rumor. 🤪

I digress.

But Isha having this conversation with Jaya at the end was really wholesome because Jaya needed to hear that she didn’t always need to be the savior—that Isha was old enough to take responsibility for her actions and her choices and that it wasn’t Jaya’s job to protect or save her. I also liked how Isha was really worried about what Jaya was doing and feeling. Sisters have intuition and Isha knew something was wrong. She also knew that it was about Grey because obviously Jaya felt a lot about Grey. Knowing that Jaya was going to marry Kiran when Jaya felt nothing for him, made Isha’s heart hurt because her sister wouldn’t be happy. I respected Isha and how she made Jaya look at it from her perspective when she said that if she married someone she didn’t love, would Jaya be happy for her? That made Jaya see how what she was doing wasn’t right, but Jaya also said it wasn’t the same thing. Oh, honey it was. I got to give Isha credit for being mature to have this type of conversation with her sister.

I also loved how Isha emphasized how the dad would want Jaya to do what made her happy. Jaya needed to hear that too because she was doing this because she thought it would make her dad happy, but the dad probably wouldn’t be happy if his daughter wasn’t. So I really liked how the dad put his daughter’s happiness first and that he accepted when Jaya called him later and told him the engagement was off.

Another moment between Isha and Jaya I enjoyed was when Jaya also accepted her sister as she was.

“You’re perfect the way you are, Isa. People who don’t turn out how their parents or their society expects are the best of all.”

(pg. 326)

When Jaya said this and she broke down and started cussing, it was such a sweet and funny moment. Because it was the moment when Jaya realized she didn’t want her sister doing things that weren’t making her happy, but to just be her. She wanted her sister to be the best robotics engineer and to say flip a pancake to everyone who thinks otherwise of a girl. And I LOVED that. It was such a contrast to her ideas she had in the beginning. The swearing was also funny because Jaya was taught to be a refined girl, but her walls broke down when she started to question who she wanted to be and the confines of her role.

She started to change because of Grey: the beast.

Grey.

Man, he’s a brooding teenage boy with messed up family issues if there ever was one.

First and foremost, this guy needs therapy and a good old hug! I would like to be the first one who gives him said hug! 😆

He just . . . had a lot of issues 😂.

In the best way of course! Who doesn’t love to save a beast?

“I killed my mother and my father believes I’m cursed.”

(pg 190)

So this is my non-PhD, some psychology courses therapy session. Let’s call it The Flowering Pages Therapy of Growth of FPTG segment 😂.

Gosh knows, all fictional characters need therapy 😂

Anyway, so let’s talk about how he said he “killed” his mother. Grey DID NOT “kill” his mother. Excuse me, sir, no he did not. Just the fact that he grew up thinking he did, hurt my heart beyond words. YOU DID NOT KILL YOUR MOTHER!!!!

Grey’s mother sadly, undeservingly passed away in childbirth. Due to the curse? I don’t know. But just because she gave birth to Grey and didn’t mean Grey “KILLED” her! I’m sorry, Grey is not a killer! Killing incites that he took a knife or a weapon and deliberately had the intent of harming her until she passed away. He was a fetus!!! It was not his intention to do that whatsoever and I would just like to say to the dad, YOU SUCK!!! 😑 HOW DARE the dad tell his son—-engrave it in his head—that he killed the mom?

What FREAKING trash!!!

I DETEST the dad.

Oh, dooooon’ttt even get me started with this piece of garbage of a father.

But we will.

Because I would just like to say, what utter GARBAGE that he pushed his son away for YEARS because he held him responsible for “killing” his wife. I get it, the dad was hurt. He lost the love of his life. But don’t push your freaking son away and tell him he can’t come home. Okay, he looks at his son and gets reminded of his wife, I get it, but he’s your son! Man the heck up and look him in the eye!!! Don’t see it as a burden, but see it as a gift each and every day that your wife is still with you in the form of your son!

BUT NOOOOOOO!

This piece of garbage wanted nothing to do with Grey and that breaks my heart. And the dad always made Grey feel like he was unloved and could never be fixed because he was cursed. I mean, the dad told Grey about the curse early on like it was a nursery rhyme. The dad had every right to believe in the curse based on what happened, but at the same time, the dad should have tried doing something to make things right rather than keep his son at a distance and hold him responsible. Oh, and don’t even get me started on how the dad told Grey to not make friends. What kind of son of a trash was hey? 😡

He told Grey not to make friends so he wouldn’t be attached to anyone and it would be easier when the curse came to fruition. Because part of the curse was the idea that on Grey’s 18th birthday he would pass away—-the Emerson line gone with him.

So he always kept himself at a distance from anyone who might care for him because it would be easier if no one loved him so when he was gone, it wouldn’t hurt him. I love how Sandhya made Grey the brooding beast of the mountains and who did his despondent thoughts in the west wing. Very on brand 👌🏼. But Grey was soooooo deserving and capable of love and it hurt me that his father believed so much in this curse that he didn’t care for his son, but just wanted him gone.

The dad needs therapy too.

They need family therapy.

Being that Grey was closed off, it was hard for Jaya to get her plan to work.

At first, I thought Jaya was being kind of ridiculous with all her blatant blinking and touching him! Girl, you ain’t fooling NO ONE 😆. Grey was not falling for it either and that was what was funny about it. And she wasn’t fooling me with her helpless, “I’m bad at archery” thing. Girl, you are an award winning archer, don’t play dumb with Grey 🤪.

But then they had a deep conversation where Grey opened up to her about the curse and with that, both of their walls went down.

“She couldn’t make this boy fall in love with her. She couldn’t break his heart. Because if she did, it was her, not him, who was the beast.”

(pg. 201)

Jaya stopped playing around with him because she realized how she couldn’t hurt him anymore when he was already so hurt. Hurting someone who was already in pain wasn’t fair and it became clear to her that he wasn’t the person she thought he was. Might I just say, I really respected how Grey stood up for Elliot when he was getting bullied by Alastair and his cronies while in the library. I mean, Alastair is a straight up jerk, but Grey’s not a jerk, he’s just reserved and people think he’s a jerk. But like a beast, he’s a true softie, so I appreciated his soft side in standing up for the little guy. Jaya saw him standing up for Elliot and she saw his countless of actions and the way he talked, and to her I think she knew deep down that he didn’t spread those rumors about Isha. The more she tried to get him to confess that he did, the more lost Grey was because he absolutely had no idea what she was talking about. Which made sense to me because Grey was cut off from his family and from pretty much a good portion of social life, so I think the last thing he knew was about Isha’s love life and her passion for engineering. And Grey was the one who supported Isha’s engineering when Isha opened up about it to him. I loved the moment when Isha met Grey because it would have been awkward, but Grey was very sweet to her and it made Isha not hate him because she knew that Grey didn’t spread the rumors about her.

Grey opening up to Jaya also made him feel less burdened and less alone. And I LOVED that. Because sometimes people have so much going on in their head and so much that weighs heavy on their hearts, that they feel like no one could possibly understand what they’re going through or feeling, so they keep it in—-their burden to bear alone. But it doesn’t have to be like that. People will listen and people will care if you give them the chance to care. Frankly, I understood how difficult it was for Grey to open up to someone because he was told to never make friends and his dad pushed him away. So him finally letting someone in felt like lifting a weight off his shoulders and that he wasn’t alone in what he felt. He needed someone there for him and I’m glad he found the bravery to do so.

Kind of like with the Beauty and the Beast romance, after they opened up to each other, they created a stronger relationship and bond. I really loved the moment when they played in the snow and had the snowball fights! It was sooooo cute and highly reminiscent of the snowball scene in the movie version. I kept waiting for Grey to give Jaya his freaking red coat because Belle in the movie wears the iconic red coat with the fur trimming and Grey in the book had a red coat! Like, boy get some mannerisms and give the girl your coat in the darn snow!!!!

One of my other favorite moments between them was when they went into the town to go see if they could get her pendant fixed. They thought if they brought the rubies into a jeweler, the jeweler could glue it back on and it would somehow remedy the curse. So they went together to the jeweler whose name was Silas. He served me major Maurice vibes 😁. We had to have a Maurice!!! While waiting for the bracelet to be fixed, the two of them went to, naturally, a book shop. And I absolutely loved loved loved it when Grey bought Jaya a book of places she could travel to in the world because he remembered how she said she wanted to travel. First, it was just sweet that he spent money on her of his own accord, and second, the fact he even remembered something she offhandedly mentioned was beyond sweet. And this was coming from a guy who had absolutely no social cues whatsoever 😂. I thought it was funny when Grey went of to walk somewhere and Jaya was like, “Excuse me, you have to tell me where you’re going.” And then Grey doubles back and apologizes before telling her where she was going. He was trying! But my poor Grey didn’t even know how to talk properly to people because he secluded himself for years.

When they got back to Silas, he demonstrated the strange properties that happened when he tried to glue the rubies back in. They always popped out, so the curse couldn’t be fixed that way. It made Grey overwhelmed and scared, and if I were him, I would feel terrified. His birthday was coming up and here was one of his last hopes to reverse the curse and it didn’t work. It was all too real.

Weirdly, throughout this whole book, it never seemed like Jaya believed in the curse. Like 0% belief and that was just weird. Because when they stopped talking to each other after them making out and Jaya breaking things off, I would have thought Jaya would have cared more about helping Grey reverse the curse and save his life. But after she broke things off, she just went on her merry way, thinking about all the responsibilities she needed to handle that sis didn’t have a bone in her body that seemed any ounce fearful that Grey was going to lose his life in a couple of weeks while she was off getting married?!!! LIKE SIS!!! WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES!!! Just because Jaya broke things off, didn’t mean the curse was gone, so I really didn’t understand why she wasn’t trying to help him live or something. Like did she care at all? It was like she was just biding her time until his birthday, and then what? Was she expecting him to be alright? Was she expecting him to live? What happens if he didn’t? Why didn’t she help more? I don’t know, it seemed weird.

After she had her kiss with Grey, she listened to the call her dad left her while she was busy making out, and when she dropped her phone in her hand and her good mood went away, I was like, OH HECK 😆.

Sandhya Menon is trying to do me dirty!

Okay, so let’s talk about one of my least favorite characters in this book (and there’s a lot that I’ll get to later), but Kiran. Kiran, Kiran, Kiran.

What garbage of a man. Oh, wait no, a boy because he has no ounce of maturity in his little body.

He was obviously the Gaston in this book, but I would say, I like Gatson more than this piece of garbage.

“Kiran was one of those guys who thought Jaya’s X chromosomal stood for ‘xplain things to me.'”

(pg. 157)

I mean, don’t all boys think that way? 🤧

His email he sent her was garbage! Take your mansplaining, overbearing mouth and spill it out in the gutter where the trash is because his words were just that. Don’t try to be all “I’m better than you,” just because you’re a boy. Get off your high horse, Kiran! Oh, and I didn’t like how he was soooo presumptuous about girls.

“Girls in trouble need their parents. Supposedly “we all” know that. Really Kiran? I must’ve missed the announcement when you earned your PhD in Expertise in women even though no one asked for your opinion.”

(pg. 157)

Jaya, POP OFF 👏🏼!!! You ain’t got a PhD in woman, you close your mouth 😂. But then again, even if you do got a PhD in woman, no one’s asking your opinion so you close your mouth then too!

I THOROUGHLY LOVED IT AND LAUGHED when Jaya wrote the snarky email back with all the capitals and lower cases! Girl, she should have sent it!!!!

But the whole time, I kept thinking Kiran, Kiran , Kiran. So if you don’t know, in America, people take innocent names and make them offensive and derogatory.

So I am thoroughly sorry for all the Karen’s in the world and I absolutely mean nothing by this, but Kiran is like the male Karen.

I mean, was he not? 😂

Then there was the whole marriage Jaya and him had. It was ridiculous because marrying this piece of trash wasn’t going to fix anything in the long run and it wasn’t going to make Jaya happy.

Jaya kept saying that marrying Kiran was her duty, her job as the eldest, and I kept saying she should have pulled a Mulan and said her duty is to her heart!!! 😫

YOUR DUTY IS TO YOUR HEART!!!!

NOT TRASH.

OOOOOOOHHHH, and don’t get me started on what he did. I knew it ever since the beginning when I picked up who Grey really was. I knew Grey didn’t spread the rumors, so I was thinking who would? And I was like, I bet it’s Kiran.

It was.

It sucked and it’s oddly satisfying when what you think proves you right.

Kiran sucked.

He spread photos of a kid just so he could secure his marriage with Jaya. And then he had the AUDACITY to spread pregnancy rumors to drive the marriage home just so he could save his own name. TRASH, I TELL YOU, TRASH.

When Jaya stood up to him, I was like, girl it’s about time!!! 👏🏼 I loved how she told him she recorded the conversation and threatened him that she would tell the tabloids/ruin his name with what he did unless he admitted fault and gave a public apology. He deserved everything coming to him. He was garbage with a capital Karen.

Then, I thought it was strange that he had an in with Caterina and Alastair.

Now let’s talk about Caterina’s character. I didn’t really like her. She seemed like the typical bully who intimidated people and only acted nice so she could use people and if they didn’t comply with her, she would retaliate. I don’t know how Caterina was raised, but maybe that had an effect on how she treats other people or holds them at a distance, but she was just very controlling and manipulative. She didn’t seem authentic with people. I don’t completely disike her, I do, I just feel like it was hard to like her. I think she comes from a place of immense hurt and that made her reluctant to trust people or let others in, so she feels like she has to keep them at a distance so they don’t hurt her anymore than she already has been. And I think she doesn’t like letting people in because of the possibility of that hurt. So I’m interested in getting to know her more with the next book, but I genuinely feel there’s something we need to learn more about, especially in terms of her family situation. Because underneath her tough-girl facade, she seems like she could be a good person. The only time I felt like she was being nice was at the end when she had that conversation with Jaya.

“Back home, we had a mango tree,” Jaya said to Caterina after a pause. “It was absolutely gorgeous with soft green leaves and the most beautiful textured bark. But it kept growing too close to this big banyan tree we already had. My father’s gardeners tried everything they knew—they paused it back, then tied it, they even considered moving it at one point, even though it was well over thirty feet tall and twenty feet wide then. But you know what they did in the end?”

. . .”They left it alone. They figured if the mango tree really wanted to grow so close to the banyan tree, so close that it wasn’t getting any light for itself, they shouldn’t interfere.”

“And what happened?” Caterina soldered her long, pale arms across her green silk-clad torso.

“The mango tree died. It didn’t stand a chance. The banyan was unstoppable.”

(pg. 308)

Caterina broke down her walls and beneath it was someone who was hurt by Alaric because she devoted three years to him and he cheated on her. I would be hurt. She has every right to be hurt. It hurt my heart that she said she loved him. He didn’t derisive his love. He’s, say it with, TRASH! And it turned Caterina into someone who was so angry and who hurt others because she was hurt. That wasn’t her. I don’t think it was.

I hope Jaya and Caterina become better friends and that we can see Caterina as more vulnerable with the next book because she’s complex in a good way. I also liked how Caterina tried to be there when Jaya needed her in the end. She was trying and that meant something.

Alastair was a complete bully. He’s a two-timing player, who had no heart in him. He played two girls and that’s disgusting. How dare he! 😤

The fact that he made DE feel like she was loved broke my heart because DE deserved better than some guy who didn’t really love her. DE kept chasing after him and having all these wishy washy thoughts throughout the book of how she loved him, but she wanted to move on, but she loved him, but he had a girlfriend, that to be honest it was getting kind of sad. DE was such a strong character and to let a boy play with her heart in that way made me sad.

All the red flags were there.

They were waving high and mighty in the wind, but she ignored it.

Because Alastair was the first guy to give her attention or to make her feel special. I get that. When a person makes another person feel like they are loved or like they are the only person in the world, it makes that person fall in love with them. I’ve been through that before. So we ignore the flags because we like the attention and we like the kindness or the idea of what the guy could be for us. I get it. But here’s my advice, don’t ignore the red flags. And just because a guy treats you with kindness and makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world, doesn’t mean it isn’t an act. And if that guy or girl has a partner already, you RUN! Because if that guy/girl has a partner, he shouldn’t be chasing after other girls in the first place or still in that other relationship because if that guy or girl was really in love with that person they wouldn’t feel the need to do so. Your person will come along and he or she will make you feel like the only person and you WILL be the only person.

Jaya kept trying to drive that point home to DE and to tell her to take time for herself, and I really appreciated how Jaya would say things to DE that DE might not want to her—-she was very honest. Because we all need friends in life who will be blunt with us and set us straight. So I admired that.

I also liked that Sandhya really went to town with this f-boy kids narrative because a lot of people do get into these kind of relationships or feelings with a person who’s just playing games. And the person being wronged tends feel bad if they’re the “other woman or man” but it’s never the “other woman or mans” fault if that person didn’t know. It’s the person who f-ed it up in making the girl or guy “the other woman/man .” I thought it was such an interesting topic to bring up because I listened to a podcast recently called Unsolicited Advice and the episode was called I’d Never Thought I’d Be The Other Woman. It discussed this idea well too in how this woman fell in love with a man. He treated her well and he said he wasn’t trying to play games, but this man was freaking married the whole time and made her “the other woman.” It wasn’t her fault because the guy played her. It’s not the “other woman” who’s to blame. It wasn’t DE’s fault or Caterina’s fault.

And I felt bad that they had to be in the middle of a dumb piece of a garbage who just wanted to play both of them like nothing.

It’s filth like Alastair that reminds me boys suck. 😂 I’m joking! Not really!

But if I’m being honest, I really wasn’t that big of a fan of the whole Caterina, Daphne Elizabeth (DE), and Alastair subplot. It just seemed drawn out because Caterina and DE were so hung up on a guy who didn’t deserve them and they kept going back and forth and being catty girls about it. But really they should have banded together to whoop Alastair’s butt and give him the comeuppance he deserved. So I didn’t really see why we needed this whole love triangle when the book was primarily about Grey and Jaya, but I guess it was setting up Caterina for the next book. Which is fine, I guess, but I would have liked to see more empowered moments between the girls and them not be played by a guy, you know?

Jaya and Grey had a big fight at the end where Kiran ** cough cough Karen cough *** told Grey about Jaya and him getting married. Kiran made it sound like Jaya was playing Grey the whole time and that was why she was in all his classes. When Grey called her at the dance from the office phones and she answered, I was like, “JAYA!! Don’t do it.” But she answered her phone anyway and Grey knew. It broke my heart that he thought she didn’t really love him and that it was a joke to him. It wasn’t.

After that, everything felt kind of anticlimactic for the whole Beauty and the Beast ending. Not in a bad way it just felt like Jaya was sad and all the while Grey went to his cave to be alone and he felt like he was going to pass alone and, again, it just seemed like Jaya didn’t care for his life. Honey, you know about the curse! Why aren’t you more concerned? If DE, Caterina, and Isha literally didn’t plot to have her talk to him, would she have left him to die alone? I don’t know. What would have happened to Grey?

So she went up the mountain to go talk to him, but after apologizing, Grey wouldn’t see reason to forgive her. What made me kind of like, WHAT THE HECK, was how Grey MAGICALLY heard Isha and Jaya’s conversation to Kiran and her parents 😂.

Yes, because the wind carried so well up a mountain for him to hear them talk the entire conversation 🤪. Seemed highly coincidental and weird. Or the fact that Isha and Jaya got cell service on a mountain in the first place. Hearing the conversation, Grey went to Jaya to be with her where they kiss and in the most slow-mo fashion, I imagined the last ruby falling.

And I kept thinking what’s going to happen?

To be honest, I thought that there would be a bright light or something movie-like that showed the curse lifted. But this is what I meant by anticlimactic: nothing happened.

They kissed and he was alive. And he emancipated himself.

LIKE HUH?

That absolutely made no sense to the curse, but at the same time, I guess it did. I just thought it was kind of ehh, that to lift the curse he emancipated himself. Like, I went through the horrible pain of watching this boy in pain and feeling not loved just so he could EMANCIPATE HIMSELF??????!??? EXCUSE ME SIR, but what? It just seemed wrong in terms of the whole curse.

“Mend that which is broken

Repair that which is severed

Or the Northcliffe name is forsaken

And shall vanish, at last, forever.”

(pg. 60)

Okay, so I think maybe the mending would be Jaya and his relationship between the Rao’s and Emersons. And then repair that which is severed might have been their attempts to repair the necklace, but it didn’t. But they tried so that counted for something. Now the last part didn’t make sense to me. If they mended what is broken and repaired what was severed, why did the Emerson name still vanish with him. OOOOOH, I just thought of this right now. This second. Maybe it’s talking about Grey not mending the relationship with his dad and that’s why the Emerson name won’t last forever. Boy, he should have mended his relationship with his dad! 😆 I don’t know. Now that I thought about it, maybe it does make sense. Still anticlimactic.

Like was there even really a curse on him?

Don’t get me wrong, I loved that Grey called his garbage father and told him that he’s emancipating himself, because YES YOU!

Honestly, if I was Grey, when the sun rose and the last ruby fell, I would have stepped back and clutched my chest like something was happening just to scare Jaya 😂. How funny would that have been? But Grey doesn’t have that sense of humor, but it would have been a good moment.

I really enjoyed how Sandhya wrapped up the book too with Jaya talking to her parents about exploring the world and wanting to be happy. I like how accepting her parents were of what she wanted. And I liked how in true fairytale fashion, Sandhya ended with a happily ever after.

Just so sweet 💜

I can’t wait for the next book with Caterina. She’s serving me some Snow White vibes with her anger and being the prettiest girl in school. I really hope we still see Jaya and Grey together. And I hope we see Isha grow up and maybe get her own book with Elliot? I don’t know but I’d read that. Who am I kidding, I’d read anything from Sandhya Menon, even if she wrote a kiddie menu 😂. It would be the best kiddie menu ever written!

Anyway, what was your favorite part of the book? Least favorite part? Anything I mentioned that you want to discuss more about?  What’s your favorite childhood fairytale? Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕

I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you might be reading this.

And as always, with love,

Rating

4. 56 Full Bloom Flowers

Characters: I love the diversity and array of characters. I also appreciated the characteristics of Belle and the Beast that Sandhya put in Jaya and Grey. What I liked most about this retelling was the ascent of friendship and sibling relationships.

Plot: I love a good fairytale retelling! I also enjoyed the parallels moments that Sandhya included from the original and her version because it really stayed true to the original story.

Writing: Sandhya’s writing never fails to put a smile on my face 😊

Romance: Every part fairytale and true love.