While I loved Melanie Dickerson's beautiful prose, I was disappointed by her plot and lack of originality in this one. 
 While The Princess Spy, The Captive Maiden, The Golden Braid, and even The Fairest Beauty all had that special fairy-tale spark (despite not having magical elements), this one was barely recognizable as Beauty and The Beast aside from very obvious broad callbacks thrown in. There is a grumpy "Beast like" man, there is a rose, and there is a girl named AnnaBEL(le). That's about it. Mostly it just felt like I was reading a weaker, b-grade rewrite of Jane Eyre or Far from the Madding Crowd. 
 I liked Annabel and related to her desire to read the Bible, but I didn't connect to her character (or that of her love interest who I guess is related to Colin from The Princess Spy? I noticed they had the same last name, but didn't pick up on exactly how they are related? Is he his grandfather or something?). I actually feel a little bad for previously complaining about not connecting to Gabe and Sophie because comparatively I found their story easier to care about than this one. 
 While Annabel's spirituality was sweet, the moral of "women are good and this guy needed to learn that and Jesus loves women blah blah blah" seemed to just be whacking the reader over the head in this book, like we couldn't pick up on that for ourselves otherwise. I enjoy the Bible stuff in Dickerson's other novels but this one just took over the whole plot. 
 Still I couldn't give this less than three stars because Dickerson really does write too beautifully not to give credit where credit is due. 
 Also I realize this is not my best review, but this wasn't the best Hagenheim book either. Not to mention I had a longer review that got deleted before I could save it (Shrugs). 
 Don't recommend, but do recommend other works by this author.