An Ever After Summer: A Contemporary Fairy Tale Retelling by Toni Shiloh

An Ever After Summer: A Contemporary Fairy Tale Retelling by Toni Shiloh
Series: a standalone
Publisher: Barbour Fiction on January 1, 2023

REVIEW BY VERA DAY

This novella is a Beauty and the Beast retelling with a contemporary setting and modern, believable characters with real-life dreams and obstacles.

Bell is an expert in book restoration. She flies to France to work on a library at a historic chateau. Jean-Luc has been restoring the chateau to its former glory for the public to enjoy and use for festivals and private events. It’s a labor of love for his late wife.

But time is running out. If Jean-Luc doesn’t complete the job by the end of August, he’ll have to pay back the grant money funding his project. The way Shiloh used the time constraint in the story added a lot of tension and kept me turning pages.

Bell is every bit as charming and determined as Disney’s Belle. I loved her. Jean-Luc plays the role of “Beast,” but you get the feeling right from the beginning that he has a big heart buried deep inside. In the first few pages, I was already hoping that Bell would eventually reach Jean-Luc’s heart. (I won’t say whether or not she succeeded. You’ll have to read the story to see!)

(Gasp!) Shiloh’s descriptions of the chateau’s courtyard and hallways and dining room and library and guest rooms and garden… I wanted to vacation there! Bell takes in the charm of the room she’ll be staying in:

Pastel blue made the white wainscoting panels along the walls pop. Deep navy velvet drapes were pulled back with golden tassels to allow sunlight to illuminate the room. A glistening chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, but Bell’s gaze was drawn to the bed. The tufted headboard had been spotlighted by the pleated swag valence that hung from the walls.

Toni Shiloh, An Ever After Summer

To create a meaningful story, Shiloh uses a theme of kindness, how it can offer someone in despair a sense of hope. Shiloh also proffers a message that even if you’ve turned your back on God, He is still right there, waiting for you to seek Him again.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story and recommend it for clean romance fans and women’s Christian fiction fans. An Ever After Summer earns five romantic fish from me!

I read An Ever After Summer through Kindle Unlimited.