Cursed Beauty

** spoiler alert ** Although this story was marketed as a gender-bent retelling of Sleeping Beauty, it is a very loose retelling. This was a fun book and I read it within the span of a few hours. The feminist tones of book through female friendship was the highlight of the story for me, even though I found parts of it lacking. I loved the interweaving of witches and vampires in the story as the motivation for Aurora to find the sleeping prince; it brought something new to the fairytale. I was hooked in the beginning with the start of Aurora's journey, but partway through lost interest due to the story slowing down once we meet her love interest. I'm still not sure what he adds to the story, and I didn't find their relationship to be believable. Though there were elements from Sleeping Beauty told throughout the story, this felt like it was heavily inspired rather than was a retelling. I think a portion of that came from Aurora being the hero of the story, but most of the book had the action happening to her when she should have been the motivator. Hers was supposed to be a story of sacrifice, but the stakes never felt high enough due to her insistence that it was always meant to happen. Overall, I think that the story may benefit if it were to be expanded into a series. The ending felt too rushed and wrapped up far too quickly. Getting to explore the world in the aftermath would be interesting in addition to allowing the characters to be more dimensional.