I started reading this book both because the movie looked interesting (where did the movie even come from? Pettyfer doesn't look like a literal beast with claws and the like, and Hudgens looks nothing like Lindy, who has red hair, pale skin, and is average-looking), and a group I'm in is reading it for this month. I wish I had not. If it wasn't such a quick read, I probably would have given it up.
Everything about
Beastly was awful--
Twilight awful, in my opinion. I honestly finished this book hating every single character. They were all so one-dimensional and just plain irritating. I can't even explain how much I dislike both Lindy Owens and Kyle Kingsbury (who halfway through the story, decided he wanted to be called Adrian King instead... Really). Kyle was incredibly creepy and obsessive at times. Will was alright, I suppose, not that he did much besides tutor them, be blind, and offer random advice. His being blind was stupid. It served no purpose besides getting a tutor in there for Kyle/Adrian. It bothered me. I don't mean to say that I mind a blind character, more so that the fact that Will is blind was emphasized so much and seemed to be the only character trait Will had besides being a kind tutor. Kendra was just obnoxious. Kyle/Adrian's father was a joke. Honestly, the guy was a news anchor. I don't doubt that the guy had money, but was it seriously unlimited? Kyle/Adrian bought what he wanted when he wanted with his Dad's wonderful Amex. He bought out the entire juniors section in Macy's on a whim when he redid the floor for Lindy. Of the tons of books he bought for her, he made sure to buy two of every one so he could read them as well. The Kingsburys had an apartment in Manhattan, a house out in the woods somewhere, and an enormous five-story apartment somewhere in New York City. And Lindy's dad? Offering out of nowhere to just hand her over to the beast? Yeah, okay. He's a drug user, sure, but did he offer to literally give his daughter to everyone whose things he stole? These people seemed to live in their own tiny, unrealistic world in NYC and I couldn't get absorbed into this novel because of it. Even the dialogue was bad. Characters randomly started speaking differently, having an entire different way of speaking than they had even pages before.
It doesn't even feel to me that Kyle/Adrian and Lindy really loved each other. He spent so much time, it seemed, convincing himself to love her, telling himself that he needed to because she was his only chance to break the spell. It was weird. Maybe Lindy loved him.. I'm not sure, her "love" seemed more like the stupid teenage kind of love where you're crazy in love with absolutely everything about him for a few months at most before breaking up.
There's a line, in fantasy, between what's obviously unreal but is still made believable and what is so ridiculous it can't be believable. In my opinion,
Beastly crossed the line into the latter.