Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you are all well. Today I will be posting my review of Ashley Poston’s novel, Bookish and the Beast, the final novel in the Once Upon a Con trilogy.

You can read my review of book one: Geekerella
You can read my review of book two: The Princess and the Fangirl

Bookish and the Beast by: Ashley Poston: When Rosie almost hits a dog on her way home one day, this leads her to the famous castle-house in their town where she ends up falling into the pool, holding a very valuable book. In order to pay for the damages of the book, she is set to work organizing the library. Sounds like the perfect job only she’s stuck working with the famous Vance Reigns – an insufferable person. The two can’t stand each other, but as the weeks pass and secrets are revealed, they start to realize the other isn’t so bad. This was the final novel in this trilogy and the reader just wanted more from it. It was good, but it could have been better. Firstly, the reader didn’t like that we didn’t get to see any of the Con in this one. We got a spilt second of it in the first chapter and the rest of the book took place after the Con. The Con was the starting place for this novel, but the reader has come to really love being immersed in the comic con of it all. Secondly, the reader didn’t really care for who the main character was – Vance. We met him in the previous book and he was utterly annoying and just so off-putting. We get it, he’s supposed to be ‘the beast’ and that this is his redemption story but, the reader honestly didn’t care enough about him to want one. For most of the novel he spent it being all ‘woe is me’, ‘no one understands me’, ‘everyone’s out to get me’ he didn’t feel like he deserved a redemption arc. It’s no surprise that he’s really a good, soft boy underneath, but he never really proves himself. Him being nice to the other main character isn’t enough to claim him proving he’s a better person. Rosie, our other main character didn’t do much for the reader, either. She had layers, but they felt so surface level. Her love of books was relatable, but there was nothing that really made her different or stand out. Also, the chemistry between the two of them felt more forced than it did cute. The reader really liked the diversity of Poston’s secondary characters. Throughout this trilogy, her secondary characters have been so good, we wished we got more time with them… or that they were the main character instead of the actual main characters. We got to see more of the adult characters, but they were slightly underwhelming. One kept fleeing to buy groceries, that got weird and annoying really quickly, like it happened that many times it stood out and ended up in this review, and another felt slightly unintelligent, like he did something that you would think an adult would know not to do. The reader got that that was used as a plot twist to move the story, which was hella cheesy, but it felt like there was a better way to have gone about it.  All in all, the reader did like the concept of the story; Poston really did use all the elements from Beauty and the Beast in her retelling, but the execution wasn’t the greatest.