Beheld

Alex Flinn

Jan 2017 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

#1 New York Times bestselling author Alex Flinn is back with magical twists on four fairy-tale favorites, each featuring a little help from Kendra, the witch from Beastly, as she searches through cities and centuries for her lost love.

Featuring retellings of favorite fairy tales such as "Little Red Riding Hood," "Rumpelstiltskin," "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," and "The Ugly Duckling," Kendra’s adventures in Beheld are filled with fresh fairy-tale fun from beginning to end.

Since she first beheld James over three hundred years ago, Kendra has tangled with witch hunters and wolves, helped a miller’s daughter spin straw into gold, cowered in London as German bombs fell, and lived through who knows how many shipwrecks.

But her powers have limits, and immortality can be lonely. Kendra isn’t ready to stop searching for the warlock she met centuries ago.

With the help of her magic mirror, Kendra will travel the world to reconnect with her lost love—and, of course, she can’t help but play a hand in a few more stories along the way.

Ratings and reviews

The thing that I like most about Alex Flinn's Kendra Chronicles series is that there is this magical blend of fairytales into contemporary or historical society. And this book is also like that - be it blending Little Red Riding Hood into the Salem witch trials, Rumplestiltskin in 18th century Germany, East of the Sun, West of the Moon in WWII era or Ugly Duckling in a high school. Flinn nicely slips the elements of the fairytale into that narrative, with Kendra being the link connecting things across the stories or time. In each of the other stories, though, Kendra was rarely the focus. The blurb, however, promised a story that was centered on Kendra but did not exactly deliver on that. Kendra has been looking for her equal, another witch by the name of James Brandon, for centuries. She met him first in Salem and then kept missing and losing him over and over again. But while the books are about her various adventures and roles in fairytales through time, she barely features in them. Also, the romance was lacking in development - it was more of like an insta-love thing? As for that mirror, and a lot concerning the magic, things were just explained away or brushed off. It didn't feel like a cohesive story structure, not like Beastly or Mirrored, where the characters were such a huge part of the storyline. In this book, perhaps only the story of Amanda and Chris could merit that. So, overall, I liked it because of the retellings but it could have had a bit more.

About the author

Alex Flinn loves fairy tales and is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Beastly, a spin on Beauty and the Beast that was named a VOYA Editor’s Choice and an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Beastly is now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens. Alex also wrote A Kiss in Time, a modern retelling of Sleeping Beauty; Cloaked, a humorous fairy-tale mash-up; Bewitching, a reimagining of fairy-tale favorites, including Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, The Princess and the Pea, and The Little Mermaid, all told by Kendra, the witch from Beastly; Towering, a darkly romantic take on Rapunzel; and Mirrored, a fresh spin on Snow White. Her other books for teens include Breathing Underwater, Breaking Point, Nothing to Lose, Fade to Black, and Diva. She lives in Miami with her family. Visit her online at www.alexflinn.com.