Unseen Beauty by Amity Thompson, 2019

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Claudette polishes furniture and scrubs floors. She doesn't do hearts.

When a stranger happens upon the cursed castle, parlormaid Claudette leaves her post to take a peek. After all, he won't see her. She's invisible.
Curiosity lands her as witness to Beast raging at the housekeeper over the stranger's fate. Now the monster knows Claudette's name... And the housekeeper knows her pawn.
Unable to resist magical commands, Claudette must end the curse. By any means. No matter who it hurts.

(352 pages)

You may or may not have been able to tell from the content of my recent reviews that I'm on a bit of a fairytale retelling streak right now. To be honest, this streak has been going for about a year ever since I fell down a very deep rabbit hole on Kindle Unlimited in lockdown. By the time I found Unseen Beauty I'd grown heartily tired of the Beauty and the Beast retellings that I swear take up a good 25% chunk of the genre.

So when I found this book, it was a breath of fresh air. The premise - making the main character one of the invisible servants cursed to serve the prince - is a genius innovation on a very well-trodden story. By sticking to the skeleton of the classic tale, and having Claudette act as Belle's handmaid, Thompson manages the seemingly impossible task of paying homage to the original tale while also completely breaking it apart from its core.

This innovation only works if the story is well-told, and that it is here. It's not hard for the reader to fall in love with Claudette, whose practicality and sense of humour combine to make her a very endearing character I enjoyed following. The worldbuilding is detailed and intriguing, as we learn about the lives of the invisible servants from the original story. We see how the servants are magically forced to obey any direct order from a superior, and how they are made immortal for the life of the curse (to the point where someone is mentioned having failed off-screen self-harm attempts). Belle is pretty much the character from the original tale, who I already loved, and the added personality given to her sisters adds an extra layer to the tale.

My biggest pet peeve with fairytale retellings is the insta-love that seems to permeate the genre. That's the other reason I had such a good time with the book: the characters' interactions are so genuine and organic that nothing ever feels cloying. And everyone stays consistent throughout the story, never doing something stupid just for the sake of keeping the story going.

All in all, this is a very fun Beauty and the Beast retelling that I'm glad I had the chance to read and which I'll definitely be revisiting again in the future. I highly recommend it if you're in the mood for this sort of book.