By the Book (Meant to Be Series)

by Jasmine Guillory

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

If you loved If the Shoe Fits, then to your delight, here is ANOTHER Disney romance retelling in the latest of the Meant to Be series, By the Book by Jasmine Guillory. This is a romance win-win read! One of our favorite rom-com authors revisits one of YOUR favorite Disney stories — a reworking of Beauty and the Beast. The only question is, why didn’t this pairing happen sooner?

Sometimes to truly know a person, you have to read between the lines.

Isabelle is completely lost. When she first began her career in publishing after college, she did not expect to be twenty-five, still living at home, and one of the few Black employees at her publishing house. Overworked and underpaid, constantly torn between speaking up or stifling herself, Izzy thinks there must be more to this publishing life. So when she overhears her boss complaining about a beastly high-profile author who has failed to deliver his long-awaited manuscript, Isabelle sees an opportunity to prove her worth and finally get the recognition she deserves.

All she has to do is go to the author's Santa Barbara mansion and give him a quick pep talk or three. How hard could it be?

But Izzy quickly finds out she is in over her head. Beau Towers is not some celebrity lightweight writing a tell-all memoir. He is jaded and withdrawn and—it turns out—just as lost as Izzy. But despite his standoffishness, Izzy needs Beau to deliver, and with her encouragement, his story begins to spill onto the page. They soon discover they have more in common than either of them expected, and as their deadline nears, Izzy and Beau begin to realize there may be something there that wasn't there before.

Best-selling author Jasmine Guillory's reimagining of a beloved fairy tale is a tale as old as time . . . for a new generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781368070157
Publisher:	Disney Press
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Series:	Hyperion's Meant to Be Series
Sold by:	DISNEY PUBLISHING WORLDWIDE -EBKS
Format:	NOOK Book
Sales rank:	5,497
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author of novels including The Wedding Date, the Reese's Book Club selection The Proposal, and While We Were Dating. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appétit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. She lives in Oakland, California.

Editorial Reviews

"BY THE BOOK is in my hands and I could not be any more excited to celebrate it! Jasmine is on a short list of my tried and true comfort-read authors. I don’t know how she manages to weave such depth into her characters while still making the whole reading experience feel SO GOOD AND NICE but she does, every single time."
—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION and BEACH READ


“Endearing….A sweet read.”
—Kirkus Reviews



“My cheeks hurt from smiling through this delightful book for adults who haven’t outgrown fairytales. And speaking of magic, how does Jasmine Guillory keep getting better and better?”
—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of WISH YOU WERE HERE


“This book is a delight from start to finish.”
—PopSugar.com

From the Publisher

04/01/2022

Guillory's (The Wedding Date) new enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy is a contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast with Black and multiracial protagonists. Izzy has always wanted to work with writers and help them craft their books. She has her foot in the door at the publishing house Tales as Old as Time, but so far her job has just been grunt work. When she hears her boss discussing the long past-due memoir of recalcitrant notorious playboy Beau Towers, Izzy offers to track Beau down and remind him of his deadline. When Beau finds curvy, Black, beautiful Izzy in his kitchen with his housekeeper, he is scathing and rude. In return for turning in his manuscript, he dares her to give him her best motivational speeches every day for a month, and Izzy agrees. Can this beauty tame her beast and secure her place in publishing, or is this fairy tale doomed from the beginning? VERDICT Izzy is quirky, likable, and relatable, and her relationship with Beau is a hard-won slow burn that morphs naturally, if quickly, from combative to friendly to romantic. Her realistic frustrations as a Black woman in publishing add depth to the plot. Guillory's fans will clamor for this book, the second "Meant To Be" novel (following Julie Murphy's If the Shoe Fits).—Heather Miller Cover

Library Journal

2022-02-04
Sparks fly between a bad-boy celebrity and the harried editorial assistant charged with helping him to write his memoir in this updated version of "Beauty and the Beast."

Two years into her job at Tale as Old as Time Publishing, Isabelle Marlowe isn't so certain she's working in her dream industry anymore. The minutiae of her role—not to mention a very demanding boss—are starting to impact her lifelong love of reading for the worse, and what's more, her secret and eternal aspiration of becoming a published author herself has been put on the back burner. To make matters even more irritating, her day-to-day life also involves hounding celebrity heartthrob Beau Towers for updates on his memoir even though the man has gone effectively AWOL after blowing past his initial deadline. A chance trip to California, however, puts Izzy in the perfect position to impress her boss and find out what's taking Beau so long to finish his book, but when she manages to locate him at home, where he’s been hiding out, the initial response she gets is rejection—until she's able to wear him down with sheer optimism, that is. Convincing Beau to let her stay and help him get past his writer's block, as well as whatever deeper issues might be preventing him from writing about his past, marks the first step in a new professional relationship. Of course, as these two begin working together, and in particularly close quarters to boot, the circumstances are perfectly engineered to develop a more intimate connection between them. The book boasts enough playful nods and easter eggs to satisfy the most die-hard Disney fan without overdoing it, and this particular Beast has less bark than Disney's and certainly no bite. As a result, this retelling doesn't have the melodrama of the original but more than makes up for it with an endearing story.

A fairy-tale reinterpretation that's more a sweet read than a dramatic tale.

Kirkus Reviews