Belle: An Amish Retelling by Sarah Price is a Christian fiction retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It follows young Annabelle when her family is forced by circumstance to sell their farm. She is given the opportunity to save their home if she is willing to marry the reclusive, temperamental, and fire scarred Adam Herschberger.
I gave this book 2.5 out of 5 stars. It was meh. I love retellings, but for the first half of the book it felt too forced (trying to be exact with the original). However, there are many aspects to the original story that just aren’t realistic to fit into the Amish culture and plain out wouldn’t have happened. The concept for this book was very interesting, I just don’t think it was very well done.
The characters were not realistic. Not only did I feel they would not get away with certain behaviors within their community (without reprimands and consequences from the Bishops), but the main relationship did not work for me. To me, she fell in love far before she should have, or a real person would have. Overall their feelings and choices baffled me often (and not just the main characters).
There were some good messages in here and I liked the use of faith in the story, especially in dealing with hard circumstances. But I feel it could have been done a bit more (like showing a deeper dependence on prayer and more time spent in the Bible to help Belle deal with her situation).
Overall this book didn’t really do anything for me. I didn’t hate it, but it was a bit of a disappointment and fell flat.
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