Good disability rep, but not what I expected it to be

This is one of my top 10 anticipated releases of 2019… A Beauty and the Beast retelling with a girl with a disabilty as MC? Sign me on! Ok disabled MC would’ve been enough to hook me of course since I am chronically ill myself and am always looking for representation. Also, I think it has been perfectly executed (though I do not have CP myself so I can’t be entirely sure of course, but I have met people wirh CP). Harper is often thrown between being a little bit ashamed (and therefore reacting sometimes a little angry at ignorant people which is totally fine, you go girl) and being comfortable with it because it’s part of her and people should just accept that. The latter is quite admirable at such a young age and I think her mother has a great impact on her acceptance and how she deals. Very realistic, no ‘cure’ a the end as reward, real obstacles aka perfection.

Anyway, enough about representation. I expected to love this book because of the previous but also because I loved the Elementals series! So much angst and emotions and roller coasters… I have to say I expected the same depth of character, but I didn’t… I couldn’t really connect or care for the characters tbh, for me the middle dragged a bit and the plot was all over the place. There are so many plot holes… And so many times I shouted ‘how stupid can you be?’ because to me the answers were so glaringly obvious (like there’s an invader and you have no army but you do turn into a gigantic killer beast that can be guided a bit, hmmm no, there’s no solution there). Normally I’m not one for world building, I’m good to go with any flow, but here it got weird sometimes… It just felt very unrealistic and the time thing is weird (like 300 years have passed inside the castle but outside only 5 but no worries you can travel outside and time just keeps working and it’s a few weeks in both timelines or something like that. Maaaaagic. Didn’t work for me. Also the theme was layed on a bit thick in the end with a few speeches about hard choices.

It might seem I didn’t like the book but that’s not true! It simply didn’t meet my expectations but it was still a fun read! But it could’ve been more than that though, hence my three stars.

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