Lost in a Book by Jennifer Donnelly

Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book by Jennifer Donnelly

 

(taken from Amazon.com)

An original addition to the beloved Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, Lost in a Book follows the lonely, bookish Belle as she finds an enchanted book in the Beast's library called Nevermore that carries her into a glittering new world. There, Belle is befriended by a mysterious countess who offers her the life she's always dreamed of.

 But Nevermore is not what it seems, and the more time Belle spends there, the harder it is to leave. Good stories take hold of us and never let us go, and once Belle becomes lost in this book, she may never find her way out again.
This deluxe hardcover novel expands upon the beautiful story and world seen in the new Walt Disney Studios' film, Beauty and the Beast. 

As I quickly make my way through all the Disney-publishing-sponsored novelizations of Beauty and the Beast, all my worst fears about poor writing have proven accurate. Compared to the As Old as Time one by Braswell, this novel was less horror-esque, but more like Alice in Wonderland, which is ALSO not really my thing.


This book makes it seem like the author had a lot of original ideas that they wanted to create this story where someone is seduced by a make-believe world, and had all these creative ideas for how that person might be trapped in it. The story itself is very creative that way; very similar in nature to Lewis Carroll, with all the metaphoric objects in the fantasy world, and the strange rules surrounding it.
The book itself is "bookended" by a snapshot of two figures playing a game of chess: one is Love, and the other, Death. Which in of itself is an intriguing, slightly different kind-of beginning to a book--but not what I would expect from a novel that's supposed to be a part of the Disney Beauty and the Beast franchise. In a way, because when you pick up this book, you expect Belle and the Beast to be at the forefront, it's a little off-putting. You're kind-of like, "Wait--is this the same story as on the cover? I'm confused. I thought this was going to be about the Disney princess...".
When we finally meet Belle, she is already a prisoner in the Beast's castle, and in the process of cleaning up his library, she finds an intriguing book called Nevermore. Nevermore, she discovers, is more than a book--it is a magical land that she is able to enter into, and she embarks on a series of visits there. The problem is that she doesn't realize that the world has a set of rules: if she takes three things from it, and leaves three behind, she will be trapped there forever.
I found the Belle portrayed in this book to also lack a certain depth of character as did the Belle in As Old as Time. I was particularly bothered by this one moment where she is flattered by the fantasy world Countess, and put in a fancy dress, and seems to eat all of it up. The Belle from Disney's animated feature doesn't seem to tally with this girl who is easily seduced by flattery and pretty dresses. Later, the book tries to change tack with her character and make her more concerned about being reunited with her father, but I just couldn't buy it. She wasn't the same pure-of-heart person. Another disappointing take on the beloved animated character.
Finally, I also found some of the dialogue and narrative voice in this book too clunky, weighing down the flow of the language. The narrator often sounded too awkward, a little childish, and insincere. I sometimes mentally rolled my eyes at the author's ways of phrasing Belle's--rather uncomplicated and underdeveloped, I might add--thoughts.

Overall Rating: 5 / 10 Stars 

Overall, the book was better than some of the other Disney novelizations I've read, if only because it brings something new to the table besides just being a description of events in the film. The problem was that this really should have been its own novel--a story written with its own characters in its own right. Because it used Belle and the other Disney characters, this felt more like a well-written piece of fanfiction, where the writer just wasn't *quite* creative enough to invent their own characters and setting for the interesting story they wanted to tell, so they hijacked some of their favorites and stuck them in an entirely new--and completely unrelated--plot.