USA Today bestselling author Joanna Shupe returns with an angst-filled retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set against the excess and opulence of Gilded Age New York.
Love isn’t always a fairy tale.
Charming and popular, Orson Grey is the most sought-after bachelor in Manhattan. When Caroline pledges to spend her life with him, it feels like the beginning of a fairy tale.
The fairy tale quickly turns into a nightmare.
Behind closed doors, Orson is controlling and cruel. Trapped by laws that prevent women from leaving unhappy marriages, Caroline has no choice but to endure her husband’s behavior. Each day grows more intolerable, and her frustration and resentment mounts. Even her passion for rare books is stifled, leaving her isolated and lonely, a fading rose trapped under glass.
When Caroline is offered the opportunity to catalogue a private library, she seizes it like a lifeline. Exploring the literary treasures, she discovers a friend in the library’s owner, Zane Bishop—a brilliant, wealthy recluse who was disfigured in an explosion years ago.
Thoughtful and kind, Zane is everything Orson is not. As their trust builds, Zane realizes that Caroline’s pain runs much deeper than she lets on. He suffers with her, knowing precisely of Orson’s cruelty firsthand. Zane will stop at nothing to set Caroline free, even if it means risking everything.
The Gilded Rose is a story of resilience, passion, and the transformative power of love.
Caroline and Zane have an amazing connection. While the ides of this is that it's a Beauty and the Beast retelling, it's more a story about how looks can be deceiving, and how beauty on the outside doesn't have anything to do with who you are on the inside.
Zane was so compelling, the man who had to learn how to live in a world that he didn't think would accept him. I think this makes him relatable to not only Caroline, but also to the readers, as we can all, I think, identify with someone who feels they don't fit in, and that there is nothing they can do to change it. Caroline, however, was the exact opposite. She had the money, and the status, and yet she had less than Zane did, because of her marriage.
There were some elements at the end that were a little extra dramatic, but without going into details, I think the closure provided by them made it reasonable that the author chose to resolve it in this manner. These two characters eventually finding a happiness that worked for them was one of the most satisfying endings of any book I have read in a while.
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