The Fire Rose

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The story began slowly, and the description sometimes got in the way of the plot, I felt. At its heart, this is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. We have the beast, Jason Cameron, a elemental wizard who got too big for his britches and tried a spell he didn't know how to uncast. We have the beauty, an heiress who was working on her PhD when her father died and left her penniless.

Though the story moved slowly, I kept reading it because I loved Rosalind, the heroine. She doesn't know her own beauty, relies on her glasses to see anything, and is much smarter than she already looks. She is intrepid, clever, insightful, and sensitive. She's also bossy, which I love.

A decent retelling of a familiar and well-loved fairy tale, I wish there had been a little less world-building and a little more relationship-building.