Review: Tear You Apart (Beau Rivage Series) by Sarah Cross (COYER Challenge #8)

First thanks to Netgalley and Egmont USA for allowing me to read an egalley of this.  And before I go on, I want to mention some upsetting news that I heard this week from another author, supposedly Egmont USA is going to be shut down.  This makes me very sad as they seem to publish so many books that I enjoy.  I hope that all the authors that will be losing out because of this get picked up by other publishing companies as soon as possible.  This author, Sarah Cross, is an author that I know I will be sad if there are no more books in the Beau Rivage series.  I loved the first book in the series, Kill Me Softly, which was kind of a retelling of a fairy tale I wasn’t familiar with. But I was really intrigued by it, and even better it had all the more familiar fairy tales included. This second book, which is a sequel, but not really, tells the story of a Snow White fairy tale.  But a little different than normal.  We do get to see Blue and Mira from the first book, but they are pretty minor characters. 

Vivian is the girl with the Snow White curse.  Her on again, off again boyfriend/childhood friend Henley has the curse of the Huntsman in the Snow White story.  He is supposed to cut her heart out for her stepmother.  In this book Vivian gets a message from the boy who has the Prince Charming curse for her story.  She’s never met him, but finds out that he lives in the Underworld.  When she meets him he seems like a really good guy, and he wants her to come live with him, where she will be protected from her stepmother and the huntsman from her curse.  The thing is, Vivian really is in love with Henley, and he seems to be really in love with her.  He promises, swears, that he could never kill her, never hurt her. But sometimes, usually when she’s done something to make him mad/jealous, his anger is very violent and destructive.  It scares everyone around, including Vivian, who thinks that once the curse takes over him, he will not be able to keep himself from taking her heart.  So she goes and visits her Prince in the Underworld, but it seems everything there is not as wonderful as it seems.  The Prince, Jasper, has a father with some kind of curse that seems to scare everyone who works for him, as well as his own children.  Every night the Twelve Dancing princesses come down to dance with their princes, Jasper’s brothers.  And Jasper has a sister, who has suffered at the hands of their father, so much that it has kept her from fulfilling her part of her curse.  When Vivian’s stepmother Regina hires an old retired huntsman to get the job done, things take a turn for the worse.  Vivian escapes to the Underworld, not knowing if Henley has died from trying to save her, and soon she is trapped down there by the troll that is Jasper’s father, and she must figure a way to get back and see if Henley is still alive.  The more she is around Jasper, the more she knows that she truly loved Henley, and she will do anything, give up her own life even, to be with him, and change the fate of her curse.

Again this is so reminiscent of the tv show Once Upon a Time, even down to the stepmother’s name this time, Regina.  I love the way the fairy tales have been changed, and how they all turn out different even if they are the same curse, just because everyone is really different.  I loved the story, and was so glad to hear about some novellas that are available so that I can get back into this fairy tale world that Cross has so wonderfully created.