Robin McKinley's Rose Daughter tells the story of Beauty and the Beast, which she has already told before, and in my opinion, better, in [Book:Beauty]. She claims she felt she had to retell the story when she learned more about roses, after cultivating them. Never have I read a book before where I felt so much like the author was simply marking time until she got to the bit with the compost. Manure provides an important climactic moment. She certainly manages to convey what roses mean to her, bu More...

I'm not sure which of McKinley's Beauty and the Beast tellings I like better. I liked the simplicity of Beauty, but Rose Daughter is a little more grown up, and there's a little more world building, and I went a little deeper into it than with Beauty because it had more depth to go into. I enjoyed a lot of the descriptions and the bits of magic, and the foreshadowing for what actually happened at the end -- although I thought it could have done with more foreshadowing, so that the greenwitch had More...

I recommend this retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but with a disclaimer. I don't know. I felt like the story was beautiful but its slow pacing especially in the beginning, is bound to put off some readers. For that reason I might suggest it to other adults before some teens.

I hadn't realized this is a second take on the subject for her, and as I haven't read Beauty I can't compare it. The story of Beauty and the Beast might just be my favorite fairy tale though, and compared to its original f More...

I held my breath as I clicked the mouse, selecting this book for the library to "hold" for me. Did I really want to read another obvious fairy tale reworked? Granted, I had read "Beauty" numerous times, recommended it to everyone, purchased it for myself, and was certain it was what Disney based their animated feature around. And just last year I had braved the retelling of Sleeping Beauty as "Spindle's End" and was equally entranced.

I had read alot of her other, young adult works of fiction thr More...

Twenty years after Beauty, McKinley retells "Beauty and the Beast" once again. I liked this version better. The writing is beautiful and the story drew me in right away.

Beauty has few memories of her mother, who died when Beauty was very young. When her father's business fails, Beauty's family loses everything. One day, Beauty finds a will that leaves a home called Rose Cottage to her family. They leave the city, not knowing what they will find in their new home.

Beauty and her sisters, Jewelton More...

Beauty continually has the same nightmare over and over again. She walks down a dark hallway towards a monster and as she grows older, her feelings toward the monster begin to change. Beauty lives in the city with her wealthy merchant father, her mother, and her two sisters—Lionheart and Jeweltongue. In an unexpected accident, her mother dies and soon after, her father falls into financial trouble. The three sisters and their father move to the country where an old woman has left them a small co More...

Rose Daughter is one of the best fantasy books I have read in a long time. Although it is a retelling of the classic Beauty and the Beast story, it is one of the most well-written and the most interesting. For years I had been obsessed with Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," but now that I have read Rose Daughter I found something new to obsess about.

Compared to their Disney counterparts, the characters in Rose Daughter had much more depth to them and I found myself feeling for them a lot more whe More...

I've read two other McKinley books and picked up this book because I've enjoyed her writing thus far. I didn't realize that Rose Daughter was another re-telling of Beauty and the Beast. I was into the book, quite enjoying it right up until the part where the merchant father got word that one of his ships had made it back to port. Immediately I thought, oh no!

I only thought this because I'd already read McKinley's previous Beauty and the Beast re-telling entitled Beauty. In comparison, I liked Be More...

I read this book as a teenager but retained no memory of it. After reading it again, I know why.

McKinley says in the afterward that she chose to revisit the Beauty and Beast story because she had more to say, especially about roses. Well, that's about all she has to say in this book. Lots about gardening, description of stuff, and cutesy-wootsy little animals. Other than that, nothing goes on in this book whatsoever.

The problem with this book is there's just no conflict. All the possible confli More...

In the author’s notes McKinley talks about how she had always loved the story of Beauty and the Beast but that after Beauty she felt that her telling of that tale was done. When I read The Blue Sword immediately after Beauty I found myself drawing parallels between the two love stories, in both cases the girl is not quite willingly or unwillingly taken away from what she knows by a man who does it even though he does not wish to hurt her. In both cases the love develops without either young hero More...

what a mess. a slow, painful, overly descriptive mess. it took me F.O.R.E.V.E.R to get into it and then once i did, i found the story only remotely interesting. AND even that was like pulling teeth to get through.
-why does she fall in love with him? because of 6 or 7 encounters and conversations?
-what's with all the animals? and the cat that gave birth on her bed while she was sleeping? gross. burn those sheets.
-i know there had to be some allusions and whatever with all her descriptions of the More...

I underwent quiet the internal debate as to whether to give this 3 stars or 4. In the end, I felt it just didn't live up to 4, so 3 it is.

The story was interesting, I liked the character of Beauty (and I liked the two sisters - I felt that the interweaving of their stories with Beauty's was very well handled), and it was obvious that the author was very passionate about her subject: gardening.

So why 3 and not 4 stars?

Well, I found the first 25% or so of the novel really tough going. The first ch More...

I talk about my love for Robin McKinley's books a lot. I know everyone's read Beauty. It was her first book. It's essentially a classic of fairy tale retellings now. And I love it and will always love it for giving me a Beauty who was not beautiful and avoided mirrors at all cost and a Beast with a library of books from all the ages, including ones that hadn't even been written yet. Makes my little heart sing just thinking of it and the way I absorbed it when I was twelve. But fewer people are a More...

While others have tried their hand at "Beauty and the Beast" before, and most have failed miserably, McKinley really outdoes herself in Rose Daughter. This story is heady and enchanting, a fully immersing fantasy wrapped tightly around the fairy-tale. Here, you find yourself swept away by McKinley's mysterious world, an often beautiful, sometimes unkind world of jealous socerery, finicky palaces, and strange cats. Here is a Beauty one finds themselves truly believing in, here is a Beast one fall More...

I should have liked this novel better, but I didn't.

After reading McKinley's first novel on the fairy tale, Beauty, I thought it would be interesting to see what she had to say in this version, which is in many ways a separate retelling -- it's bigger, and more complex, and definitely intended for a slightly more sophisticated reader than the first. The descriptions are beautiful, and Beauty's sisters are much more interestingly developed. There's a nice background story to Beauty that rounds he More...

Hmm… I’m not quite sure how to rate this book. Indeed, some parts were rather good—inventive—but as I finished, I couldn’t help feeling a little unsatisfied.

Though, I first must give McKinley credit for being able to rewrite the story and make it seem fresh and original. It doesn’t read like it’s just another retelling of an old fairytale. I like how she infused magic into this world she created. The magic of gardening… the fragility of it all—the preparations and cultivation, how the blending More...

Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. I think because it was the girl - not a princess - who rescued a man trapped by his own foolishness. In the Disney version it's a prince, in McKinley's later version he is a sorcerer, and you know what? I wouldn't mind reading ten more books based on Beauty and the Beast. I'm really happy that McKinley wrote two! The Rose Daughter follows the older idea, as far as the story goes that I'm acquainted with.

The characters we all know. The More...

I liked most things about this book, except for the fact that the beast (*SPOILER*) remained a beast and didn't become the handsome man of the so significant portrait. I kept waiting and waiting for the moment to arrive only to have my hopes dashed by some twaddle about "I love you as you are and don't need you to change". Um... doesn't sleeping with a beast count as bestiality?

I did, however (being a flower lover) like all the descriptions of roses and the way they were such an exotic flower to More...

One of my all time favorite books is "Beauty" by Robin McKinley. As you've probably guessed, it's the Beauty and the Beast story. Ten years after McKinley wrote "Beauty" she decided to re-visit that same story and write the tale again in a different sort of way..."Rose Daughter". My Mom had warned me that I'd like "Beauty" best. And she was right. But still, "Rose Daughter" was fascinating. So much deeper, more details, more background into the belief of magic. There is so much talk about roses. More...

I don't like to read about a book before I read the book, so I came at this one kind of blind, knowing that it was the next book on my list as I work through all of McKinley's published books and also that it had something to do with the Beauty and the Beast story (again). I really wasn't expecting it to be the actual story of Beauty and the Beast (again) as she had already told that in her book Beauty, but it was. So it wasn't until I was done reading, having enjoyed the journey very much (agai More...

I remember being at the city library when I was a teenager and staring at the rows and rows of emerald green, ruby red, and sapphire blue book spines and trying to select a book. From the center of a bookshelf, I noticed a white spine with black lettering: Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast. I pulled the book off the shelf and was pulled into a magical, beautiful, lush world of fantasy and fairy tales.

About 20 years later, as an adult, I was browsing the bookshelves and I c More...

At the back of this book is a kind of apologetic note from Robin McKinley explaining why it is, exactly, that she's written another retelling of Beauty and the Beast. She explains, a bit sheepishly, that though it is her favorite fairy tale, she thought she had said all she had to say on the topic in her first book Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast (which she actually didn't even mean to write in the first place). It was nice to have some insight, but I wish she hadn't sou More...

You know the story of the Beauty and the Beast. Of course you do. Disney even made a movie, right?[return]You know nothing. [return]Rose Daughter is a lyrical, fantastic and grounded retelling of the fairy tale. Three sisters, reduced by penury by their father's bankruptcy, remake their lives in a remote cottage surrounded by rose bushes.[return]The oldest daughter disguises herself and becomes a groom to work with the horses she loves, and the middle daughter discovers a passion and talent for More...

Reading this straight after reading Beauty was a bit of an odd experience. Having read both Rose Daughter and Beauty before, but not sequentially, I had parts of both books mixed up in my head.

Rose Daughter, having been written 20 years after Beauty is another retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It is more complicated than Beauty, and quite a lot more adult (not in an "adult themes" sort of way, but in the way the language is used - it's just more complicated).

The writing is lovely and Beauty and More...

I did not like this book. It made very little sense, plot-wise, and I'm even now not entirely sure what the actual story was. The narrative is rambling and directionless, what tension the author tried to build in failed utterly, and the characters were more annoying than anything else. There is no curse to be broken or puzzles to be solved. There is no reason given for anything that happens, and no moral dilemmas more complex or nuanced than "choose between being shallow and cruel or being loved More...

Fun fact: I always confuse the names Robin McKinley and Patricia McKillip. Not so much the writing, mind.

This is a perfectly competent retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It does some nice stuff with the care of roses as plot-and-symbolism. And I loved the fleshing out of her sisters and their lives.

Unfortunately the novel feels a bit like the author noted down the plot points from the fairy tale as goalposts and wrote the rest of the novel in between them: there's a certain disconnect. I'm readi More...

Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale and I loved McKinley's Beauty which is why I picked this book up, I wanted to see how she reworked the story.

I didn't like this book as much as I liked Beauty but then again I am partial to the idea of a Beauty stuck on books rather than a Beauty stuck on gardening. However, I loved how she pulled the symbol of the rose deeper into the story and how she reworked how the Beast became what he was.

While the story itself was good, I felt that the ending More...