I've probably read more Beauty and the Beast retellings than I'd like to admit (this is at least the fourth or fifth in recent memory)--but I do like the idea of taking a familiar concept and reworking the details so that despite the basic premise, it feels new and enriching.

Ensnared was provided to me as an ARC via NetGalley, but I also purchased an ebook copy for 99 cents, so my opinions are not affected one way or the other.

Overall, this book strikes me as a rather unconventional, but enjoyable retelling. The magic of the fairytale is swapped out instead for robotics and AI and our characters are given more complex backstories and a lot of the basic details are switched around in a good way. The villain of the tale is also given a much different motivation than I've ever seen, which was refreshing, and we're given more to ponder than just "can you love someone despite their ugliness and flaws?" I give it high marks for its prose, creativity, and original outlook. I very much enjoyed Ensnared.

But, unfortunately, there are a few things I would quarrel with.

This mostly has to do with the author not elaborating/explaining/wrapping up parts of the plot. The blurb, for example, serves to tell us a decent bit of the backstory when in reality a book should be fully comprehensible without a person reading the blurb; this isn't really the case with Ensnared. If I hadn't read it prior to starting, I wouldn't have quite guessed that Alainn's father had accepted money to create an AI robot for Lorccan and that Alainn had a deep mistrust of Rose because these elements are vaguely and barely touched on.

Another issue is the big reveal of Alainn and Lorccan's past experiences--this is a bit poorly worked into the story because only a few small details feed into why they're important and the issues caused as a result are far too easily overcome or they're just kind of not addressed like they ought to be, which is sad because working these in better would have had a deeper emotional pull, make the characters more complex, and overall made the book feel more polished. As it stands, their backstories just kind of seem hazardously thrown in while the focus goes to seeing Alainn and Lorccan together and also focus on the robotics/AI part with Rose.

Spoiler

So the big reveal for Alainn is that her dad's gambling caused her and her friend to be kidnapped when she was 17 because he owed someone money. Alainn is alluded to have been raped and Cara ends up dead when the car the girls were in is sent over a cliff. The details that allude to Alainn having trauma because of this are essentially that she doesn't like elevators due to nearly dying in a car, she hasn't had relationships because she was assaulted, she dislikes robots because one helped kidnapped her and her friend, and she has felt depressed because she misses Cara and feels lik she played a role in her death. But really, outside of a few small mentions, these things don't really impact the story. She rides elevators begrudgingly, she has very little resistance to being okay with having sex with Lorccan, she doesn't really struggle with depression. We're mostly just told by Rose and Rosebud and Colby that Alainn was ever suicidal/sad.

As for Lorccan, we get told that he's in this tower because he had crazy and highly abusive parents who were convinced he'd die if he left or was exposed to any germs so he's disfigured by his mom to quell to leave, yet then we're told that Lorccan doesn't actually have any poor health problems like he's been led to believe... yet the story just kind of goes "eh, Lorccan will stay in his tower with Alainn and they make do." Like... if you're gonna say that the whole time he was trapped and unhappy in this tower... isn't the point for him to learn to not fear germs and to slowly start making his way to leaving the tower and interacting with people? Like, he has very little growth except that instead of being 1000% antisocial he's just very fixated on Alainn and having her in his tower with him all the time.

So, I will say that I feel this could have been an even better book and that I do take away some stars due to these shocking details about abuse/trauma not having the kind of importance and attention that they ought to have had, since the author decided to include them as major pieces to the character's backstories.

Still, not a bad read! I liked it a lot.