Title The Beast is an Animal Series --- Author Peternelle van Arsdale Cover Art --- Publisher Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2017 First Printing Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2017 Category Young Adult Warnings None Main Characters Alys, Cian Main Elements Demons, Witches

A girl with a secret talent must save her village from the encroaching darkness in this haunting and deeply satisfying tale.

Alys was seven when the soul eaters came to her village.

These soul eaters, twin sisters who were abandoned by their father and slowly morphed into something not quite human, devour human souls. Alys, and all the other children, were spared—and they were sent to live in a neighboring village. There the devout people created a strict world where good and evil are as fundamental as the nursery rhymes children sing. Fear of the soul eaters—and of the Beast they believe guides them—rule village life. But the Beast is not what they think it is. And neither is Alys.

Inside, Alys feels connected to the soul eaters, and maybe even to the Beast itself. As she grows from a child to a teenager, she longs for the freedom of the forest. And she has a gift she can tell no one, for fear they will call her a witch. When disaster strikes, Alys finds herself on a journey to heal herself and her world. A journey that will take her through the darkest parts of the forest, where danger threatens her from the outside—and from within her own heart and soul.

I read this book for free on the Rivetedlit.com site when it was available free for the month of October. To be fair, there were a lot of books available that month and I was kind of rushing to get through most of them, and there was another one, Strange Grace, that had a lot of similarities to this one that I liked a lot better, in fact I have trouble remembering the details of this one, always thinking of the other one first. Maybe I would have appreciated it more if I hadn't read both those books within a week or two of each other.

In this tale there is Alys, a girl who is spared when the Soul Eaters come to her village and kill all the adults, and putting all the children asleep. However Alys was the only one left awake. In these remote villages that is enough to cast her as a witch in the new village that took her in. And talking of the new village...I dunno, I kind of understand them treating the orphans as dirt, after all they were kind of tainted as survivors of the curse, but at the same time, using them to man your ramparts was a bit weird.

The Beast was an interesting concept, a kind of forest god or devil, but perhaps not necessarily evil though he is terrifying in appearance but I felt there was a lost opportunity to do something interesting with this creature, as in Strange Grace where I didn't see the twist coming. The Beast just popped up a few times to tell Alys she's the "Chosen One" to save the world and then disappeared without telling her what she needed to do. It isn't even clear what the Beast was (an animal apparently but I didn't understand what the title had to do with the story either, seems the concept comes from a quote about man being an animal, which is appropriate for this story maybe Tennessee Williams The human animal is a beast that dies and if he's got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting! or Joseph Goebbels Man is and remains an animal.Here a beast of prey, there a housepet, but always an animal. )

Also, the Soul Eaters reminded me of the witch sisters in Wicked Deep, a third RivetedLit.com book I read this month. But again, the back story of Wicked Deep was far richer than here, so I almost had sympathy for the monsters in Wicked Deep, but very little for these since they weren't even given much of a personality or humanity.

And why spell "forest" as "fforest"? Sure, maybe it is supposed to take place in Wales, though I didn't get that vibe at all, it felt like a made up world to me. And then why only "fforest" not other f words? I mean we weren't talking Welsh all the time, so why mangle the English? Its a bit like watching a movie where all the Nazis speaking English amongst themselves with German accents, no, more like Hunt for the Red October where the Russians speak English amongst themselves and their captain is Scottish. Of course the book is written in English, it would be annoying to have to translate all the dialog, I get that, but then don't mess with the spelling? My reaction was the same as many reviews I saw, "Oh, my copy has a typo", and not "oh, what a cool idea".

Thus in the end, I didn't care much for the characters, didn't get much out of the world building, and while it had potential, other books did it better. It might be unfair because I read this one last and I was getting tired of cramming to get them all in by the end of the month, so maybe read it and make your own opinion. Perhaps I was just missing them point.