ARC Review: Bearly a Lady by Cassandra Khaw

Bearly a Lady by Cassandra Khaw has been a story that I have been anticipating for quite some time. It's been making the rounds on book twitter with pretty good reviews, which has only made me want to read it more. You can imagine my delight when Emma of Miss Print agreed to send me her copy!

I don't know why, but I didn't realize this book was a novella until I opened the package. I don't hate novella's, but I do think they need to be companions to novels and not stand alones. A lot of the problems I had with Bearly a Lady could have been avoided if it was a novel. There was a serious lack of world and character development. We were told snippets of etiquette and customs but were largely left to figure out the rules of the supernatural community from our own imagination.

I really like paranormal romance books. It's one of my favorite genres. Bearly a Lady piqued my interest because the main character, Zelda, is a werebear. However, the possibility for unique story telling is completely glossed over. We get one look at Zelda transformed but the rest is only mentioned as a vague 'that-time-of-the-month' running gag. Not to mention that all of the worst tropes of paranormal romance are delivered with a straight face (over-sexualized shifters, conniving fae that the main character didn't know about until they outed themselves, swift romance).

I had to give this novella one out of five stars. It was one big cliche that relied way too heavily on sex to drive the story. Bearly a Lady might have been decent if the author had made the story in to a full novel and added more of a plot, but I can only take it at face value.