Friday, April 7, 2017

Book Review: Ensnared

Title: Ensnared
Author: Rita Stradling
Genre: Romance, Fairy Tale Retelling
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I won't lie, I didn't go into this re-telling of Beauty and the Beast with high expectations. I mean we all know how the story goes; beauty falls for beast, saves him from life of hermit and they live happily ever after. Ensnarled tells the typical story for the first 50% of the book. Sure there are robots and AI involved but for the most part it's very true to the base story we all know so well. But at the 52% point things suddenly get really interesting. 


I didn't want to put this book down once I got into the second half. It's a wild science fiction romp where you need to ask yourself if a robot can harm humans... and if it did why would it want to. 

That's really the interesting piece to this book is the motivation of what drives our characters (and robots) to do what they do. The culmination of this story wraps itself up nicely and is quite satisfying. 


There are sexual scenes in this book. They are quite tastefully described and blissfully brief but without a doubt this is an adult book and not written for teens. 


I'm anticipating many reviewers will compare this to Meyer's Cinder. I think that is a poor comparison. The only thing the two have in common is they are fairy tale retellings that involve advanced technology. Otherwise they are completely different in both treatment, set-up and intent. 


If you like a cute, but 'how could this ever work' romance, with some science fiction thrown in and discussions around what it truly means to be human than I think you will greatly enjoy this book. 


Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review. Don't believe me? Check out the other books I've had eARCs for that I gave poor reviews to. I always give my opinion whether good or bad.

1 comment:

Leonore Winterer said...

Another one for the to-read list - you're giving me way more interesting books than I can ever get through with!