Customer Reviews

Beauty

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The characters in this book are so real, so well-written, you will be taken in. I read this book in an obsessed and feverish 4 hours! I couldn't put it down for a second. I was completely surprised at Leland Crompton's personality. Someone so cruelly treated most of his life was delightful and like a breath of fresh air to me. Lee seemed to be a man made purely of feeling. I guess the reason why I absolutely fell in love with Leland's character is because there aren't many people like him. I am fortunate to know one. Someone with such a beautiful heart that it makes him seem even more beautiful outside than he already is. Is it really our appearance (the clothing and makeup) that makes us beautiful, or could it be our personality that brings out our true beauty? Time has a way of changing our appearance but our hearts will always be the same. If you fall in love (can you even call it that?) with someone only because of the way they look, I ask you this: when time takes their beauty away and all that is left is their personality - a personality that you may have always had trouble tolerating but put up with because of their physical appearance - what will you do? Their wealth and beauty, and the physical pleasure will not always be enough. Just something to think about. Something, I am sure, Alix didn't think of when she began her relationship with her previous lovers and with Mark. She realized it, but stayed with him because she had likely not been with better men and was herself somewhat shallow. She had always focused on appearance...until Leland. He showed her what true beauty is made of. :-) Read it! You won't be able to put it down, I promise.

I love all retellings of Beauty and the Beast and admit to being addicted, so of course I had to read this modern version. It was exactly the type of book I dream of writing. You fall in love with Lee along with Alix. You begin to hate Mark. The characters are all so real, you can feel their pain with them. I loved this book so much, and it is something any fan of B&TB should definitley read! The only sore spot is the ending. I really don't see why Wilson chose to do what she did, but the book is still very beautiful.

I have known about this book for a few years now, but not until I discovered an old tape of a CBS movie called, "Beauty" did I bother to do research on Amazon to gather more information about the book.
I enjoyed the book, and I read the other comments reviewers made before I started writing mine. I was very distressed to read that some people were offended by the book, and those reviews really did make me think.
I enjoyed the shyness of the characters and their getting to know each other. I think that the book was very honest in its desciptions of how someone reacts to another who looks so different even though we all tell ourselves that we have better manners than to stare or be shocked.
I hated the ending and I don't know why Ms. Wilson felt the need to hurt the characters that way. I just don't get the trend of romance writers to write "down" endings. Is it to make the story be more realistic? Who cares? We aren't reading romances for the realism. We read them to renew our belief in ourselves and in love, and this book did a good job for me in that respect except for the ending.
I would still recommend this book, but like people have said previously, you can readily skip or ignore the last few pages. Just pretend that Lee and Alix are snuggled up in their home, sitting by the fire, enjoying each others company. It works for me.

I have never been happier that I decided, to go beyond the circle of authors I normally read, to try someone new! Susan Wilson created a story so finely crafted it is truly a work of art. I could truly see Lee & Alix as real people,living a very unique story.After finishing this novel it makes you want to look for the "beauty" in people instead of the "beast"

This book had me right up until the last chapter. Then I went from totally loving it to totally hating it! I loved everything about it (enchanting characters you could empathize with, beautiful descriptions of winter scenes, engaging plot). I thought it had a magical quality, in spite of the modern setting, but then it all went right out the window in the last 13 pages. (I know this was supposed to be a modern, updated telling of the classic, but was the depressing ending REALLY necessary?) If you want to enjoy this book, DON'T read the last chapter, and just pretend they lived happily ever after!

This is a wonderful book. I suppose one could technically classify it as a romance, but it is so much more than that. Its idea taken from the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty brings the story into the modern world and gives it a twist.

Alix Miller is an artist and has taken a job painting the portrait of reclusive Lee Crompton. For centuries, Miller's have been painting portraits of the Cromptons and this time it will be no different, except it will be Alix instead of her father. She arrives at the secluded home and doesn't get to meet her subject right away. Instead, there is a partially cold housekeeper/cook and a simple-minded caretaker. She doesn't meet Lee for a couple days and when she does, has a mild shock. Lee suffers from Acromegaly and has been hideously disfigured. This is the reason he has become a recluse and mainly hides himself from the world. He only invited Alix because it was a tradition in his family.

Alix grows fond of Lee but before she can finish the portrait, she has to go home as her father is failing fast from cancer. During this poignant time in her life she finds herself growing closer to Lee, and further from Mark, her handsome but career driven boyfriend. Lee is there for her as only the best of friends can be while Mark seems to have trouble making any time for Alix and her feelings. To make matters more complicated, Lee is afraid of allowing anyone too close as he can't believe anyone would truly love him with his deformity. To add even more into this, his housekeeper wants to protect him and circumstances seem to take him further and further away from Alix, despite what they both want.

The characters in this book are wonderful. Alix is bright and engaging and you can really feel her relish in her work and her happiness with creating art. Lee is aloof but really a gentle wonderful person and you can't help but like him. To further that, Wilson paints Mark as an unlikable character so it really is quite easy to cheer for Lee instead of him. The other characters, although their parts are small, also add quite a bit to the novel.

The writing is easy to read, although Wilson does tend to make it a bit flowery at times. There really isn't too much offensive in it aside from that fact that it is hard to read how Lee is treated at times. I do have to say (without giving too much away) that despite how well the ending was written, I was largely disappointed with it. Most of the book is written from Alix's perspective although the epilogue and the last part of the book are written from Lee's. This is kind of unusual because Lee is a writer in this novel and you would think he'd be the narrator because of this.

I do enjoy this book every time I read it and will make it a plan to read some of Wilson's other works. If they are as well written as this, they're sure to please.

Beauty
Copyright 1996
200 pages

Review by M. Reynard 2010

I'll love any book that has a disfigured leading character, and what was good about this book was that instead of it being 'At first, I was taken aback but I can see the beauty there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder' it was 'He's ugly. No, ugly ugly.' Aside from that, the leading lady was the right amount of feminine to make her believable and not annoying. So that makes for two winning characters in my book.

Lastly, the book is a great realistic version of a re-told fairy tale and despite the mood it left me in, I appreciate the short journey.

Have you ever read a book that drew you in? That you loved and thought was amazing and cried and laughed over? And then you got to the ending and thought "what???!" This was one of those books. The book is based on the Beauty and the Beast myth. It's a modernization of the story. The "beast" is Lee Crompton, a reclusive author disfigured by a rare genetic disorder. The "beauty" is Alix Miller, a woman brought in to paint Lee's portrait. The Millers have had a long standing relationship with the Cromptons -- they always paint the Crompton family portraits.

True to form, Beauty and the Beast fall in love (though there's no magic here and no changing him into a handsome prince) and the story is incredibly sweet and wonderful.

Until the end. The entire book is told from Alix's viewpoint. There's a sudden change to Lee's viewpoint and the ending takes a strange and unexpected twist. It comes out of nowhere and took all the magic and joy out of the book. I felt completely let down and disappointed in the book at the end. Which is really such a shame as all about about the last 10-15 pages of this book were wonderful. I recommend basically stopping at the end of Alix's narrative and forgetting the rest of it. If you do that, you'll satisfied with the ending. If you forge ahead you'll feel as irritated as I was.

The novel was so good. I thought the characters were a bit shallow including the heroine Alix, she was with a very shallow man for the longest time, she would think to herself what a jerk he was and then she would just hop into bed with him. I thought Leland was adorable although the people with his disease disliked the novel and the way the disease was portrayed I thought Leland was kind and sweet. A little more could have been said and researched about Leland's desease instead of the reader just hearing about how ugly and reclusive it made him. The friendship and love between Alix and Leland was beautiful but the author could of at least let us see them consumate that love. The novel was great, I was so happy when they finally got together and then the last 13 pages it was like someone else had started writing. It was very stilted with little emotion and it made absolutely no sense to end the novel that way. Just because it is a modern update doesn't mean that the ending has to be all depressing, if it were really modern, modern medicine would have saved that ridiculous ending. If you want to read a beutiful love story then you should read this book but when they finally get together, close the book and just make believe they lived happily ever after.

I listened to the auduiobook recording of Susan Wilsons book Beauty and I liked it. It is sort of based on The Beauty and The Beast Story but is about a beautiful woman named Alix falling in love with a man named Lee who's face has been disfigured by a disease and I think that Lee is a very inspirational character and I found his and Alix's love story very touching and yes the ending was very sad but I sill liked this book. I just found out recently that this was turned into a movie, I was was watching something on Lifetime Television and a commercial came on for the movie that is based on this book and I was like oh, my gosh, I have to set my VCR timer and tape it, which I did. I haven't watched the movie yet but it stars Janine Turner from Northern Exposure as Alix and Jamey Sheridan from Law and Order: Criminal Intent as Lee and also Hal Holbrook from Designing Woman as Alix's father. I haven't watched the whole movie yet but I did see the ending and they left out the sad ending from this book!