KEEPER OF THE BEES by Meg Kassel – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Keeper of the Bees by Meg Kassel
Series: Black Birds of the Gallows #2
Published by Entangled Teen on September 4 2018
Genres: Young adult, Fantasy
Pages: 304
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
Goodreads

The nitty-gritty: Lush imagery and beautiful writing make this a stand-out YA fantasy, despite some issues I had with one of the characters.

Keeper of the Bees, as I found out after I requested it, is a companion novel to Blackbird of the Gallows, which got lots of rave reviews from the blogging community last year. I was hoping I could read this one with no problems since I didn’t have a copy of the first book, and I’m happy to say I didn’t have any trouble. This is a very unusual retelling of Beauty and the Beast and I enjoyed it, although it was a little too YA for my tastes—meaning it had a fairly predictable love story and more or less insta-love between the two main characters. But if you’re looking for some unique world-building and a compelling story, I think you’ll enjoy this book.

The story is told in first person by the two main characters, Dresden, who is a Beekeeper, a boy who was cursed long ago by a Queen who merged his body with a hive of honey bees, and Essie Wickerton, a young teen who is touched by a family curse and sees things that others cannot see. Dresden’s and Essie’s chapters alternate so we get to see the story from both perspectives. When the story begins, Dresden has come to the small town of Concordia, following a group of harbingers—creatures who sense impending doom and feed off the energy of the dead. Dresden’s honey bees can sense humans with bad energy, and in order to keep the hive under control, Dresden must release his bees on a regular basis and allow them to sting these people. The sting eventually drives them mad enough to commit suicide, which in turn gives energy to the harbingers. One of the aspects of Dresden’s curse is that he absorbs the souls of each person he stings, so his face is constantly shifting.

When Dresden spots Essie, his bees sense that there is something “off” about her and they demand to sting her. But before he can send his bees to do their job, Essie surprises Dresden by telling him she can see all his faces, something a human has never been able to do before. He’s intrigued enough to stop his bees, although he reluctantly promises Essie that he will kill her eventually.

In the meantime, there is something brewing in the town of Concordia. The harbingers have gathered because they sense a tragic event is about to take place. As Dresden tries to make sense of his growing feelings for Essie, he discovers that there may be a way to break the curse—both curses in fact—to end his suffering as a Beekeeper, and to break the Wickerton Curse as well.

The idea of Beekeepers was pretty cool, although at times I struggled with visualizing exactly what takes place in Dresden’s body. The bee hive is described as living in his chest and the bees escape from his mouth, and I think I worked too hard trying to figure this out. Were the bees in his lungs? They also make honey, so his body is filled with it. Kassel also tells us that the queen bee lives near Dresden’s heart, and she never emerges from his body. I think it’s best if you don’t think too hard about the logistics of having a hive of bees living in your body and just go with it! It was a magical process to create Dresden, after all.

I loved Kassel’s atmospheric writing, she does a great job of setting up a world full of dangerous beings, some of whom influence the living. The idea of Dresden’s bee stings causing humans to go crazy and kill themselves might sound horrific, but I seriously loved that idea, and as you read more and more of the story, she explains some of the mythology surrounding his curse. And Kassel really has a way with imagery. Her descriptions of what Essie sees (or imagines she sees) were horrifying and beautiful at the same time. For example, every time she’s in the presence of Dr. Roberts, she sees him with a forked tongue and a dead raccoon draped over his head. It was honestly hard to tell what was real and what was only in Essie’s imagination, which made the story more interesting.

And yes, there is a romance between Dresden and Essie, but I do think it was sweet and it didn’t overtake the rest of the story. Dresden is struggling with his feelings for Essie because he knows they are wrong, but the more he gets to know her, the more he wants to protect her. Which brings me to…

I think the part of Keeper of the Bees that I struggled with the most is that Essie is a victim for most of the story. In fact, she never gets her own agency. She’s always being rescued or attacked by others, and even though she has a handful of loving and caring people in her life—her Aunt Bel was a wonderful character, and Dresden becomes her champion as well—there are just as many horrible people surrounding her. At the top of that list is her psychologist Dr. Roberts, an evil man who is obsessed with Essie sexually (and ugh the fact that she’s only seventeen makes that even worse) and keeps her on a diet of pills that blunt her ability to focus and make her easier to control. She’s also under the custody of her father, an abusive asshole who, although he doesn’t live with her anymore, is in collusion with Dr. Roberts to make sure she doesn’t have any freedom. Aunt Bel and Dresden do their best to save her from these horrible situations, but they are limited because Essie’s father has so much control over her. I could tell that Essie hated her situation, but she’s also a pretty passive character and doesn’t really try too hard, in my opinion, to change her fate.

Keeper of the Bees is stuffed full of interesting characters and side plots (there is a lot that I haven’t even mentioned in this review), and I did think it was a little too much at times. I can definitely see Kassel doing more with her world because it’s a fascinating one. I’m very tempted to go back and read the first book, because it deals more with the harbingers. If you’re looking for an unusual YA that brings something new to the table, I can recommend this without hesitation.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.