Synopsis (from Amazon):
Follow your heart…
But you might just end up snacking on flies.
When a bumbling fairy godfather gifts a humble woodcutter’s fourth child with extraordinary beauty, she spends the next eighteen years trying to hide it—behind a book. Now, Elisette is ready to follow her dreams and become a scholar, but her admirers keep getting in the way of her ambitions. Ellie knows better than to rely on her fairy godfather, but she’s desperate enough to risk asking him for help. The trouble is, Mortimer isn’t feeling very helpful. In fact, he’s downright irritated…
After a bit of vengeful fairy magic, Ellie discovers that webbed feet and green skin are even harder to manage than beauty. No one cares what happens to a frog, except maybe quiet, unassuming Prince Cambren, who has enough troubles of his own.
Will Ellie find a way to break her curse and live happily ever after? Or will she spend the rest of her life eating flies and living in a pond at the back of the palace garden?
A Beautiful Curse is a romantic fairy tale novella. It can be read on its own, but is more fun when read as a part of the Entwined Tales, a series of interconnected fairy tales by six different authors. Each story follows the adventures of one of seven children from the same family as they seek out their own happily ever afters in spite of their reluctant fairy-godfather.
Review:
Ellie finds life hard because no matter how smart she is, how well spoken, educated, most will not see beyond her looks, and believe that she is a capable person. While Mortimer offers a… different… solution, she finds that if someone can take her seriously when she isn’t even human, perhaps not all is lost for her. This is a unique take on usual frog prince story, and while the lesson learned is somewhat the same, the way in which Ellie has to learn it is unprecedented.
Star Rating: 
Amy S. Brown 