The Beast Curse

In the Regency-inspired kingdom of Calatini, enemies can become lovers, and beauty can save the beast with her love… and powerful magic.

All of court knows about the fierce enmity between Lady Juliet, the powerful royal witch, and the rakehell Duke of Oakmoor. What they don’t know is that the two were once lovers—a mistake neither can forget. One Juliet vows never to repeat, no matter how her body longs for it, yet one Oakmoor would gladly repeat, if only to silence her sharp tongue.

But even Juliet doesn’t know that in Oakmoor’s youth, a jilted lover cursed him to transform into a hideous beast one day, and now that vindictive curse is finally about to manifest. Perhaps the royal witch could help him, but to ask Juliet would reveal—and risk—far too much. So Oakmoor consults a seer instead and discovers his curse can only be broken by true love.

Desperate, the cursed duke kidnaps an innocent young lady he believes can love him and break the evil spell. But that lady already loves another, so Juliet secretly takes her place. Trapped alone together until his curse is broken, Juliet and Oakmoor soon begin to feel more than enmity and unwanted desire. But getting to happily-ever-after isn’t always as easy as breaking a curse…

In The Beast Curse, Beauty and the Beast are reimagined as the warring Beatrice and Benedick for the perfect low-spice enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance. Dive into this tale—or the other books in the Calatini Tales series—for cozy, heartwarming HEAs.

• The Beast Curse by Katherine Dotterer
• Series: Calatina Tales Book #6
• Published: KatSpell Press on August 26, 2025
• Genre: Fantasy, romance, fairytale retelling
• Pages: 500
• Dates Read: 8.16.25 – 9.17.25 (33 days); 13 hours 52 minutes
• Format: eBook
• Add on Goodreads
• Purchase on Amazon
• ⭐½
• 🌶🌶🌶

---

Full disclosure: I did NOT finish this book. I stopped on page 361. Bear that in mind before continuing with the review.

I. Am. Not. A. Quitter! I truly hate to DNF any book. Period. Even if I only read for 100 pages, my curiosity still drives me through the book because I want to know what happens. Even if I’m fairly certain I am going to ultimately end up disappointed, I will finish a book. I made it over halfway through this book, and last night…I had to throw in the towel. And to be honest, I’m feeling guilty about it because I don’t even think the author is a bad writer. I just think this book was bad.

I’ll start off with the positive things I can say. I enjoyed the author’s writing style. It reminded me of Bridgerton in that it has a Victorian-era-ish Regency vibe, which I absolutely love. Think…gazes lasting a little too long, or the brush of a skirt against the leg, being inappropriate and the cause of a salacious scandal. Think of demure women having “coming out” parties when they come of age to let all the eligible bachelors know they’re single and ready to mingle. Think ballroom dresses, Kings and Queens, what your family name is, is more important than who you are as a person. You get the picture? Now add a dash of fantasy magic, with witches and magical creatures, and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice Romantasy just waiting to happen. Add on top of that, it’s an adult fairytale retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales of all time, Beauty and the Beast. Yes please!! Sign me up! And that is the entire reason I chose this book from the ARC site I participate in. So I had high hopes, as this was something literally hand-picked from my favorite genre repertoire.

I knew going in that this was the 6th book in a fantasy series. I have never read any of the other books, so I want to be fully transparent about that. However, the author had links throughout the book that took you to her website, where it would give you enough backstory on some of the lore, so you weren’t confused or lost. I appreciated that and found that quite enjoyable. The author has spent a lot of time building the world of Calatini, and it truly is a remarkable place with rich lore, interesting characters, magical creatures, and beings. I personally don’t think that I had any difficulty enjoying the parts of the book that I did like, merely because I had not read the previous books. It can definitely be a stand alone book. You just might not get a few of the references to previous couples’ storylines that may pop in from time to time.

I also really loved the cover of the book. I know that may be a silly thing to praise, but it’s true. I love simply stated yet elegant designs, and this cover stays true to the series design for the rest of the books. The color purple is also significant for it, as it is the color of Juliet’s (the FMC) favorite flower from her home that she had fled from, and has not been able to visit in many years.

I also really liked the MCs, Oakmoor and Juliet. The book is an enemies-to-lovers romance, and the banter between them was very good. Juliet had a sharp wit, and she is not one to be trifled with. For every stab at Juliet that Oakmoor makes, she can come back with something even wittier and sharper-edged, and I adored that about her. I was totally getting Anthony and Kate vibes from The Viscount Who Loved Me, if you’ve read that book or watched the Netflix season of Bridgerton. She came off as a strong female, having fled her home because she was from a very patriarchal area. The women who had magical powers were only allowed to learn magic that helped them keep a happy home, such as cleaning and cooking. Anything beyond that was forbidden. And like many Regency eras, marriage was for power, never love. But Juliet knew she was destined for more, and she wanted love, so she flees all she has ever known for a better and hopefully brighter life, which she finds in Calatini. Oakmoor is a perpetual bachelor, having been cursed by the first woman he had ever been with. The scorned witch casts a curse on him with her dying breath, which doesn’t materialize until much later in life, but has plagued him with horrible nightmares. He’s also an orphan who was raised without love. So while he may enjoy the gentler sex and all their womanly ways, he has absolutely no belief in love, nor a desire to marry. Yet he can’t seem to get over a brief encounter he had with Juliet 14 years prior, and neither can she. This had all the makings of a great enemy-to-lovers trope!

Now for the negative. OMG…get on with it!!!! This is what I kept saying in my head as the story progressed. I was in love with the book by the halfway point. When we get to the curse breaking, and Juliet and Oakmoor finally let their guards down a bit, I was eating it up. Reading for hours at a time. I couldn’t get enough. But then the curse is broken…and we go right back to how we started off the book, and it was so tedious and repetitive. Dotterer tries to throw in a few twists here and there, and I did like the one of her brother showing up. But then she throws in an enemy-to-lover plot with him and a woman who has been doggedly pursuing Oakmoor, and I just couldn’t! It felt so formulaic, with very few scenery changes. There is an event of some sort, and Juliet and Oakmoor both attend. They coyly try to avoid each other, but of course, they inevitably end up in forced proximity to each other. We have to hear about Georgiana pestering Oakmoor and him trying to avert her advances at every single one. The Orandian couple shoots each other knowing glances because they have insight no one else seems to have, and know that Oakmoor and Juliet truly love each other but are just too stubborn to admit it. So we have banter between Oakmoor and Juliet, which was funny and witty at times, but got old. If this formula wasn’t bad enough, the very next chapter is almost a rinse/repeat, just from the other’s POV. And OMG the inner dialogue of the two characters was tedious also. If I had to hear one more time about Oakmoor thinking “Juliet wants love in a marriage, and I can never be that man for her” or Juliet thinking “I’m obviously not the woman Oakmoor wants, because I’m not young and all the women he courts are young” one more time….actually, I didn’t! Because I quit the book. That is precisely the point where I had had enough. Juliet walks in on Georgiana kissing him, and even though Juliet is pregnant, she decides she can’t tell Oakmoor about the pregnancy “because he’s already chosen who he wants to bear his children, and it’s not me”. Despite his moments later, pinning her to the wall, about to rip her clothes off, and telling her he does not want Georgiana, but he’s too cowardly to admit that what he wants is Juliet.

I looked and saw that I was only on page 361 out of 488 (per my version of the eBook that I received), I said nope! I’m done. I looked back at my reading times and realized that, except for the part in the middle where they are forced together to break the curse, I was only managing to slog through 10-20 pages at a time, and this was the reason. It was too repetitive. I like to take a lot of notes when I am doing an ARC, so that I don’t forget anything. Reading back through my notes, I’m laughing because there are a lot that say “Oh looky here! Another party they can avoid each other at!” or something to the same effect. I don’t know if the author was just determined to meet a specific page quota or something, but so many of these scenes could have been condensed down. There was rarely anything in them that really contributed to moving the plot along. And despite me really liking the MCs, I started kind of hating them and their inability to just freaking talk to each other!!!! You’ve had sex at least twice, and you’re carrying his child ffs, the time for playing coy and demure is out the window!

So yeah, that’s what finally tipped me over the edge, and I decided that I had to DNF. I still hate that I did, because I honestly think that if it weren’t for the repetitiveness and tediousness of these silly scenes, I would have loved the book. I still have questions. Like, why were the Orandians so damn nosy? I swear they have some ulterior motives there, and they’re up to something. Maybe good. Maybe bad. Who knows? I certainly won’t. And what in the heck is up with the mysterious veiled witch? What’s going to become of Cassandra, Juliet and the veiled witch’s apprentice? What about Giovanni and Georgiana? Lots of plots that I want answers to, but not bad enough that I wanted to spend a single minute more of my time trying to find out. Sorry, not sorry.