Bookish and the Beast

A tale as old as time is made new in Ashley Poston's fresh, geeky retelling of Beauty and the Beast. In this third book of the Once Upon a Con series, we meet Rosie Thorne a young woman feeling stuck. She s stuck on her college application essays, stuck in her small town, and stuck on that mysterious General Sond cosplayer she met back at ExcelsiCon. But most of all, she s stuck in her grief over her mother s death. Her only solace was her late mother s library of rare Starfield novels, but even that disappeared when she and her dad sold it to pay off hospital bills. Then there s Vance Reigns he s been Hollywood royalty for as long as he can remember, with all the privilege and scrutiny that entails. Vance s world comes crashing down when a tabloid scandal catches up to him and he s forced to hide out somewhere the paparazzi would never think to look: Small Town USA. At least the house he s stuck in has a library. Too bad he doesn t read. When their paths collide and a rare book is destroyed, Rosie must work to repay the debt. But while most superfans would jump at the chance to be anywhere near Starfield s handsome hunk, Rosie would rather be anywhere but. Vance is a jerk, she can t stand him, and the feeling is mutual. But as this pair of opposites begrudgingly gets closer and their careful masks come off, they may just find there s more risk in shutting each other out than in opening up their hearts.