A Beauty-and-the-Beast retelling: a girl from our world is pulled into a cursed kingdom and the doomed prince trying to save it.
- Score
- 78.2
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- dual
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
If you liked this, read
What readers think
Readers consistently praise Harper as a standout heroine — her cerebral palsy is woven into her identity without defining her, and her ferocity reads as earned rather than performative. The autumnal Emberfall setting and fairytale atmosphere draw wide appreciation, as does the dual POV which keeps tension high. The most common criticism is that the Harper–Rhen romance feels underdeveloped and slightly forced, with many readers noting stronger chemistry between Harper and Commander Grey — a dynamic that colours the whole series arc. The pacing is seen as slow in the opening hundred pages before picking up sharply. The villain Lilith is flagged as underdeveloped with vague motivations.
Read it if
- · Readers who want a Beauty and the Beast retelling with a disabled, action-forward heroine
- · YA fantasy fans who enjoy portal-fantasy setups and light political intrigue without heavy spice
- · Readers drawn to morally ambiguous love interests and tension-heavy slow-building romance
Skip it if
- · You need a clearly satisfying central romance — Harper and Rhen's chemistry is widely called forced
- · You dislike slow openings; the story takes roughly 100 pages to find its footing
- · You want high spice or explicit content — this is firmly closed-door YA
If you liked this
- · For fans of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles — portal fantasy meets fairy-tale retelling with a fierce, disabled heroine
- · Like Beauty and the Beast but darker, with political stakes and a love triangle shadow hanging over book one
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes — forbidden feelings under a curse and an occupied kingdom on the brink of war
In this series
Part of Cursebreakers — read in order:
Full series profile & spice/trope breakdown →Which dark romantasy heroine are you? Five choices in a forest that wants you dead.
Take the quiz →