Katastrophe Chef

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, which has a dual POV with Ida and Fen being the main characters.
The idea overall was interesting, and the only reason I finished the book, but the execution failed to hit the mark for me. I wanted to like this; however, the actual flow and plot were a mess, the characters did not seem to be consistent, and it literally felt like this was book two in a duology. I say that because the way the backstories were given felt like you should have known the backstories already. I literally checked FOUR times to make sure there was not another book before this one. It technically is part of a series, but the series is a number of standalone books featuring different authors writing about similar subjects (fairy tale retellings).
If this were a duology, it probably would have worked better, the first book being the backstories (which sounded like interesting backstories) of both main characters and ending when they actually met for the “first” time, which is kinda the beginning of this book. Then the characters would be better fleshed out, and the flow would make a little more sense.
Many times scenes would start, and you’d have no idea who was in the scene because of just stating “Fen jumped down from the tree”, it’d be vague and refer to him as he or “his dark eyes bore through me” or something like that, and until you’re a page in its not revealed who “he” is. There’s no reason to beat around the bush; the reader can’t view it like a TV show, just tell us who is in the scene.

There is no spice, but it does deal with trauma and mental and physical abuse.

I would give this book 2 stars out of 5.