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    Rose Daughter
    Rose Daughter
    Rose Daughter
    Audiobook12 hours

    Rose Daughter

    Written by Robin McKinley

    Narrated by Bianca Amato

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Twenty years ago, Robin McKinley dazzled readers with the power of her novel Beauty. Now this extraordinarily gifted novelist returns to the story of Beauty and the Beast with a fresh perspective, ingenuity, and mature insight. With Rose Daughter, she presents her finest and most deeply felt work--a compelling, richly imagined, and haunting exploration of the transformative power of love.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 28, 2013
    ISBN9781470360931
    Author

    Robin McKinley

    Robin McKinley has won various awards and citations for her writing, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Her other books include the New York Times bestseller Spindle’s End; two novel-length retellings of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty and Rose Daughter; Deerskin, another novel-length fairy-tale retelling, of Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin; and a retelling of the Robin Hood legend, The Outlaws of Sherwood. She lives with her husband, the English writer Peter Dickinson; three dogs (two hellhounds and one hell terror); an 1897 Steinway upright; and far too many rosebushes.

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    Reviews for Rose Daughter

    4/5

    781 ratings41 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A retelling of Beauty & the Beast...to be honest I thought her book Beauty which is an alternate retelling of B&B a much better read
    • 3/5
      I like the way it started and it has a very enjoyable style - particularly nice to listen to. I felt that the ending wasn’t well thought out and it seemed like maybe the author ran out of time before publication and just smooshed her notes into conversations. SPOILER: I liked that the beast didn’t need to be beautiful to have a happy ending.
    • 3/5
      The first retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Ms. McKinley. A nice story, but her second retelling, Beauty is so much better.
    • 5/5
      Listened this time via audiobook.
    • 5/5
      The story is powerful, I like how it was presented. Good job writer! You can join in NovelStar writing contest happening right now till the end of May with a theme Werewolf. You can also publish your stories in NovelStar, just email our editors hardy@novelstar.top, joye@novelstar.top, or lena@novelstar.top.
    • 3/5
      This took me much longer to get through than I anticipated. I think it was the writing; it was very lyrical and very descriptive. I prefer books with more dialogue and line/paragraph breaks. Besides that, this was an interesting twist on the fairy tale. Pretty simple with just a few details on the Beasts past different than usual, and of course Beauty's personage. But I didn't really invest in either character, which for me is really important. Glad I found the book but I won't be looking for it again most likely.
    • 4/5
      Definitely not my favourite of McKinley's works -- I thought I'd like it more than Beauty, and in one sense I do, in that something that bothers me about the ending of Beauty is addressed here and a different sort of ending written. I like the world, the sisters, the domestic stuff that (as usual) McKinley shines with. I liked the castle and Beauty's work there, and the way other little bits of fairytale lore come in (like her experiential seven days spent in the Beast's castle versus seven months for her sisters). It's also notable that the way Beauty and the Beast relate to each other is very similar to in Beauty; the differences are more in a more complicated setup with slightly different inputs producing a slightly different trajectory.

      My main complaint the first time I read this was that the greenwitch at the end has far too much explaining to do, in quite a short span of pages, and that remains problematic to me. Some things needed a bit more opening out, foreshadowing, something, to prevent a long stretch of infodump via dialogue.

      Still enjoyable, though, and the writing is gorgeous, of course.
    • 5/5
      I loved this story and felt that it was a great re-telling of the story Beauty and the Beast. This book has many interesting elements to it and is a great book to read.
    • 4/5
      Loved this book, but I felt like I've read it before, oh that's right it's almost exactly the same as Beauty. Down to certain passages being almost identical. But I love this story and this book! I did notice differences and I liked them too!
    • 4/5
      I dithered between 3-1/2 and 4 stars. The story pulled me in pretty readily but I kept expecting a different plot, so I was occasionally distracted. To be fair, I probably read this book too soon after reading 'Beauty' and need to give this folktale a re-reading.
    • 3/5
      A satisfying retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
    • 5/5
      Charming as of all of Mckinley's work. A gentle re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, which is a theme she's written upon a couple of times. This was very much inspired by her move to live in a quaint english village. This is much more true to the original story than some fairy tale re-tellings, but none the worse for that. There are three sisters, who's successful father meets with sudden ruin and they're forced to flee to a desolate village and make a new life for themselves. This they do, but the father finally recovers sufficiently to travel, but becomes ensnared in the magical lair of a Beast, and can only escape with the promise of his daughter's hand. Beauty being the youngest and plainest of his daughters faces her fate bravely. She's always had a green-fingered touch with plants, and so she manages to coax the dying Beast's plants back to life, before discovering he isn't quite so fearsome as he might first appear. There's lots of gentle humour and joy in the success of others. The love between the family sisters is especially well done, the forgiveness and acceptance of the faults in others. The Beast himself is never more than a large figure clothed in rich black robes. But his house remains eminently mysterious and causes Beauty much consternation. This is as close to angst and anything that happens in the novel. Yet it remains engaging and if not fast moving than at least interesting and enjoyable. It has Roses and Unicorns and baby animals. It's always going to be wonderful.What more need you ask.
    • 4/5
      This was definitely an enjoyable take on one of my favorite tales. Three sisters instead of the one Disney gave us. There is a mishap with the father resulting is one of his daughters living at the Beast's magical and mysterious home. Some elements were not well explained or had only a very cursory mention but they did fit in this world, I just wanted a little more explanation (animals and salamander if you're wondering). All in all an enjoyable read I didn’t want to put down.
    • 3/5
      On the whole, Rose Daughter was all right. Rose Daughter is McKinley’s second time retelling the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast,” the first being her debut novel Beauty. I have read Beauty, but it was too long ago for me to be able to accurately compare the two books.Beauty is the youngest daughter of a merchant. When disaster strikes her family, she along with her father and two sisters moves to a country cottage covered in roses. The fairy tale is not a re-visioning and for the most part unfolds in the usual manner.If you’ve read any amount of McKinley’s work, Rose Daughter should feel at least somewhat familiar. It contains all the usual hallmarks of her work. To quote from my prior review of McKinley’s Shadows: “An animal loving girl goes to have her mystical climatic encounter that draws upon her unexplored magical heritage, all the while accompanied by a practical herd of random animals.” This statement remains more or less true for Rose Daughter, although not much is actually done with the heroine’s magic powers in this case.The focus of the Rose Daughter retelling is the roses themselves. In this version, Beauty is a gardener who loves roses. I actually did like the way McKinley put the roses at the core of the story. It fit with the original tale but still felt new. However, the best aspect of Rose Daughter has to be the relationship between Beauty and her sisters. I really loved the strength of the bond between them and how they worked together in their new circumstances.Rose Daughter is a sedately paced story that I still enjoyed reading. However there was a lot about it that was very vague and unclear. It seems like there were some good ideas with the backstory to the tale (I particularly liked the idea of Beauty’s mother being significant) but I never felt like I completely understood it.Rose Daughter had a few significant problems that related mostly to the warping of time. Beauty decides that she wants to marry the Beast after knowing him for only seven days? Really? She hardly had any interaction with him! Then there’s Beauty leaving the castle near the end. Why did she leave? There was no good reason. And then she hardly spent any time there before heading right back. Basically she only had time to run through a recap for her sisters which was as boring as all get out.I’d probably recommend Rose Daughter only to people who are already fans of McKinley’s fairy tale retellings. If you’re interested in reading one of her books, I would suggest The Hero and the Crown or Sunshine instead.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 5/5
      Think an author can only tell a story once? Then read this second retelling of Beauty and the Beast and you'll be amazed.
    • 4/5
      I think I enjoyed her first one better, but this is still a pretty good re-telling of my favorite fairytale.
    • 3/5
      An interesting take on the fairy tale, but only partly satisfying. I found the pace of the book disconcerting, with snippets of information about the mystery of the Beast parceled out very intermittently until the last part of the book. At that point the revelations are piled on one after another with blinding speed, and the climax follows fast on their heels with hardly any time allowed to grasp what's going on. I did like the characters and appreciate the fact that everyone -- not just Beauty -- finds his or her talent and a happy place in the world, but it doesn't quite compensate for the pace of the storytelling itself.
    • 3/5
      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 reading along this perfectly nice story about Beauty and her sisters and "Oops, time for their father to go on a journey and ask what they want him to bring back and she says a rose." Or this perfectly nice story about Beauty with roses and things in the castle and "Oops, time for him to give her the rose and the speech about how when its petals have all fallen he'll be dead." The parts just don't blend as organically as they ought.
    • 3/5
      Beauty was better.
    • 3/5
      I really liked this take on the Beauty and the Beast legend, probably because I'm a gardener, and McKinley is clearly a real gardener too. The reverential way she treats compost is worth the price of admission. I do find her writing style to be a little lush for my tastes sometimes, and this book is a good example of that lushness. It's very romantic, of course. I loved the cat parts almost as much as the garden parts.
    • 4/5
      Beauty and her two sisters were living in the lap of luxury with their successful father when suddenly everything changed. Her father's business failed, and they were left destitute. They made a new beginning in Rose Cottage, where things weren't quite what they seemed. The coming of Beauty's family to Rose Cottage was the first step to opening an ancient curse that would change their lives forever. This was an adorable little story...just as enjoyable as McKinley's first retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story. I was skeptical that McKinely could tell the story twice but, although there were some similarities, the two stories were very different. THIS Beauty used her magical gardening capabilities to change the world...
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite retelling of Beauty and the Beast! No offence to Beauty (by the same author) but this book is one that I usually read once or twice a year. The story tells of three beautiful sisters who move to the country after their father looses his fortune and how they forge a new life. Jeweltounge and Lionheart each take on jobs in town while Beauty tends to the garden. To her surprise the ugly bare bushes bllom into beautiful roses and everyone believes that she is a Hedgewitch. The sisters are not evil as they are in the original fairy tale and they grow as characters and sisters. The story becomes even more interesting when Beauty is sent to the Beast's castle and is there for seven days, each day brings a new animal: a bat, hedgehogs, toads, and even kittiens. We all know that Beauty is going to fall in love with the Beast but the ending is a twist that is beautiful and sweet. Go and read it!
    • 5/5
      "Rose Daughter" is Robin McKinley's second take on the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, and boy did I have trouble with it as a teenager. I think it is because it is definitely a more mature look at the story; I just reread it for the second time after several years and this time around I understood the intent behind this new rendition. This isn't intended to be cryptic, just to explain that as an idealist teenager, there were some things I didn't "get" about McKinley's new version. One very interesting aspect of the story is that it is much more directly allegorical than her first book, "Beauty." In this retelling, Beauty's sisters are named "Jeweltongue" and "Lionheart," and they interact with characters such as the seamstress, "Mrs. Bestcloth," and the squire, "Mr. Trueword." The core of the story is the familiar arch of the merchant's family that loses everything in financial ruin, and moves to the country in their hardship. Of course Beauty sacrifices herself in order to save her father when he steals a rose from the castle of a mysterious Beast, and of course she ends up falling in love with this Beast. But the depth with which McKinley paints the experience of loneliness, regret, and heartbreak is something quite beautiful to read, and hard to describe in just a few short paragraphs. Read this for a moving love story (one with a lot of beautiful descriptions of roses).
    • 5/5
      Where Beauty is a sweet, simple retelling of the story, Rose Daughter reflects a more complex and detailed telling. It was engrossing, reminding me of the way I felt reading Pegasus - it was a story that got deep inside me, invading my dreams and making me think. There's more magic, more danger, more development of both characters and the story. It's a complicated story that tugs at the heart and gets into your head. It's a story that requires more of you, as reader, than Beauty did. And I like that. Actually, I love that - I want to get involved with the books I'm reading. (Though I will say I'm very glad I didn't end up crying my eyes out while reading this one like I did during Pegasus!) I was swept up in the story and carried along until the ending - which caught my entirely by surprise. And yet, even though I wasn't expecting it to end the way it did, I was pleased - delightfully happy - with the ending.
    • 5/5
      In this beautiful and graceful novel, McKinley retells the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. Typical of McKinley’s books, the prose is grand and poetic, truly a joy to read. While this has many of the traditional elements of Beauty and the Beast, it includes other intriguing additions like sorcerers, a greenwich, unicorns, and Beauty’s green thumb for roses. Beauty’s father offends the Beast, whose palace provided him safety in a winter storm. The beast made him promise to bring him one of his daughters. When Beauty comes to the castle, she is terrified but intrigued by the Beast, but even more so by his dying rose garden in a greenhouse. Beauty dines with the Beast each night and gently tells him no every night when he asks her to marry him. Beauty tends the gardens until she gets the roses to bloom, and then goes back to her family, promising the Beast she will return before the last petal on his rose falls. Almost too late, she declares her love to save the Beast when she returns. This version has a surprising ending that shows true love: the beast does not turn back into a handsome prince, but he and Beauty live happily ever after in a simple life. 5 Stars—beautiful imagery of the ever-changing magical castle, a well-told tale that shows Beauty as a deep, thoughtful and kind person.
    • 5/5
      You know the story of the Beauty and the Beast. Of course you do. Disney even made a movie, right?You know nothing. 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.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 sewing and becomes a renowned seamstress. The third daughter, Beauty, tends their ailing father and makes the cottage garden prosper and the roses bloom for the first time in decades. This is a YA, so not all that long, and I can't really bear to tell you more of the plot because it's just so beautiful. And I'm not being ironic here. The language made me want to put on slippers of gold cloth and dance, or dig my fingers in the dirt - go read it. There are strong themes of family – the three sisters who learn to value themselves – and family - the three sisters who learn to value each other – and the glory of love.
    • 4/5
      I do prefer Beauty to Rose Daughter - Grace and Hope and Beauty seem much more like real people, while Lionheart and Jeweltongue and Beauty are more fairy-tale characters, somewhat abstract and unreal. And I still have no idea who/what their mother was - not the simulacrum, not her daughter or descendant, but...linked somehow? Or something. Which leaves the story a little unfinished. So with all that - it is only a good story, not one of my favorites like Beauty. The roses are very symbolic, but also very real - I like this Beauty best when she's dealing with the roses and the animals, and resolutely ignoring the oddnesses of the palace. It's a very rich story, for all its fairy-tale flavor - one of those you can spend a lot of time thinking about when you've finished reading it. But being me - I'm now going to reread Beauty.
    • 4/5
      Rose Daughter is a beautiful retelling of The Beauty and the Beast. McKinley’s focus on relationship building is what appealed to me the most, and not just between Beauty and the beast: I really enjoyed reading about Beauty’s family as well. On the whole, the writing is good, but toward the end of the book I found myself tripping over some of the author’s stylistic choices. There is a lot of repetition and rephrasing that began to draw attention away from the story and more toward its construction the more I noticed it.
    • 5/5
      The most amazing thing about this book is that it is so completely different from Ms. McKinley's first re-writing of beauty and the beast. Almost everything about the first book is turned on its head in this re-telling - and yet, I love it equally well. Some things I thought were fun: all the names of people (and even places) are descriptive (Lionheart, Jeweltongue, Longchance). They all suggest things about character and fit well with the main characters (whose names are certainly roles too). The roses are a treasure trove for any rose gardener - there is so much about them. The scents and colors and personalities are all loving described as only someone who loves roses could do. I liked the ending - the idea that love can transcend appearance and it doesn't have to be rewarded in the end with perfection (physical or otherwise). Very satisfying to read this re-visiting of the famous fairy tale - and the author's note at the end is a bonus!
    • 4/5
      This is cheating on Ms McKinley’s part – she’s already written her own version of 'Beauty and the Beast', why do another one? This is not so very much different from the earlier book, although the stuff about roses was quite fascinating. I’m sure there’s more to growing cuttings than just sticking twigs in the ground and adding fertiliser, but really, who knows?