“Beauty and the beast like you’ve never imagined!” –New York Times bestselling author Pintip Dunn KEEPER OF THE BEES is a tale of two teens who are both beautiful and beastly, and whose pasts are entangled in surprising and heartbreaking ways. Dresden is cursed. His chest houses a hive of bees that he can’t stop from stinging people with psychosis-inducing venom. His face is a shifting montage … psychosis-inducing venom. His face is a shifting montage of all the people who have died because of those stings. And he has been this way for centuries–since he was eighteen and magic flowed through his homeland, corrupting its people.
He follows harbingers of death, so at least his curse only affects those about to die anyway. But when he arrives in a Midwest town marked for death, he encounters Essie, a seventeen-year-old girl who suffers from debilitating delusions and hallucinations. His bees want to sting her on sight. But Essie doesn’t see a monster when she looks at Dresden.
Essie is fascinated and delighted by his changing features. Risking his own life, he holds back his bees and spares her. What starts out as a simple act of mercy ends up unraveling Dresden’s solitary life and Essie’s tormented one. Their impossible romance might even be powerful enough to unravel a centuries-old curse.
Each book in the Black Bird of the Gallows series is STANDALONE:
* Cleaner of Bones (Prequel)
* Black Bird of the Gallows
* Keeper of the Bees
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Beauty and the Beast like you’ve never imagined!
After reading well written romance after well written romance, I find myself in the mood for something different. This superbly written YA was just what I needed. The characters were unique, tortured, and completely captivating. A story that’s ‘different’ in the best possible way! Might not be for everyone, but I loved it!
Dark, haunting, unique, beautiful, sweet YA paranormal romance.
Very unique concept and well executed.
A delectably creepy tale with a love story that’s a sting to the heart!
Such an interesting story. Underdogs to hero’s. Awesome world building. If you love teen books, this is a must read.
I’m just going to start with how much I love this book, maybe more than Black Bird of the Gallows, but not by much as that was awesome also. This is a stand-alone continuation of that story; you don’t have to read Black Bird of the Gallows to enjoy this book, but you should anyway.
Dresden is a beekeeper, an immortal remnant of a world where magic once existed. He carries his bees inside his chest, letting them out to sting bad humans; the venom makes them insane and murderous before they succumb. Dresden follows harbingers, people who transform into crows and follow catastrophes. Oh, and Dresden also has an ever-changing face, a compilation of the many people who met their deaths from his bees.
He shows up in a town in Missouri where he meets Essie, a girl with her own issues. She is consumed by the Wickerton curse, a genetic insanity that causes her to see hallucinations. She is in the care of her Aunt Bel, one of the few Wickerton descendants who didn’t succumb to the curse.
For some reason, Dresden’s bees won’t sting Essie. This fascinates him, and Essie is similarly affected as Dresden’s presence calms her visions. But murders, the looming disaster, Essie’s cruel father, and another paranormal being, the Strawman, complicate their relationship.
This is such a unique concept, and I loved the backstory. Essie and Dresden are both terribly burdened, yet strong together. The writing is lovely, alternating between the two. And the cover is just fantastic; I’d have bought the book for the cover alone.
If you’re looking for a YA romance that’s just a little different, invoking magic, danger, and ancient curses, you need to read Keeper of the Bees.
Well, I haven’t read the first book in this series, so was a little leery of reading this one, but my worries were all for nothing. This is more of a companion novel I guess, so I wasn’t missing any knowledge that would keep me from enjoying this one.
For me, the story started out a little weird. I was unsure just how I would feel about the characters, if I would be able to get into the story if they were too way out there. But it didn’t take long before I was sucked into the story, needing to figure out just what was going on, who all these paranormal characters were, and just what exactly their role in the story was going to be.
Dresden of course sounded pretty creepy at first, as a Beekeeper, having bees that came out of his mouth, as well as the fact that he could change from a human form into a swarm of bees to travel. The Harbingers seemed not quite so creepy, I mean, crows could be a little bit, but nothing like bees would be in my opinion. And then there was the Strawman. Yeah, that would definitely be creepy.
While up until now, and most of the time still, for Essie, all of these people didn’t seem that far out of the normal compared to things she saw all the time. You see her family suffered from a curse that caused them to all kind of go a little crazy. And as the story goes along, it seems that maybe not only does someone want to kill off the rest of the family members to end the long line of the curse, but at first to even try to blame it on Essie.
There were a lot of twists and turns, some things I kind of had an inkling about as I read, and was pleased to see that I had kind of guessed correctly. Other things were total surprises, and I enjoyed being entertained with a new detail I couldn’t come up with on my own. I’ll have to find time to go back and read the first book, as well as the e-novella that is now available. This is a series that I feel would be good to have available in my school library, and the copy I got to read for this tour is one that I will donate to my school library for sure.
Keeper of the Bees by Meg Kassel is a companion novel to Black Bird of the Gallows. Returning to Ms. Kassel’s world of harbingers, beekeepers, and strawmen, Keeper of the Bees is a story about a centuries old beekeeper who was cursed when he was eighteen and the girl who actually sees him, not the monster he’s become.
Dresden as a beekeeper has a hive of bees living within his chest that sting people with weak minds and makes them crazy. He’s followed by the harbingers of death, a murder of crows, to Concordia where the town is marked for death. As he awaits the event that will bring death to those in Concordia, Dresden’s bees find people to sting, but when his bees want to sting seventeen-year old Essie Wickerton, Dresden finds that he can’t let them, especially when she sees what he really is and is not afraid. Instead, she calls him pretty!
Essie Wickerton is cursed, or rather some of her family is cursed with delusions and hallucinations, while others are normal. She has moments when she cannot tell whether what she is seeing is real or not. So when she sees Dresden’s many face changes when he appears, she obviously thinks she is hallucinating, but when he proves to be all too real and standing right in front of her, Essie can’t look away or make herself feel afraid. This moment between Essie and Dresden starts the absorbing story of Ms. Kassel’s Keeper of the Bees, with its twists and turns, which made me want to keep reading until the end.
I really enjoyed Ms. Kassel’s world-building in her first book, but I think it grew in more detail in this novel especially with the details about the beekeepers and Strawmen. I also liked the mystery about Essie’s family and learning more about Dresden and how he became a beekeeper. These really added to the novel, and I like how it moved and was well-paced. If you read the first novel, you know there is an event that will lead to death amongst the townsfolk in Essie’s town like plague or natural disaster. So having another plot to move the story along involving the characters was great.
Dresden’s relationship with Essie and his friendship with Michael were what I loved about this story and the added bonus of seeing familiar characters again was awesome.
Overall, Keeper of the Bees by Meg Kassel was a wonderful companion novel and completely stood out on its own. I am hard pressed to say which book I liked more, but I may be leaning towards Dresden and Essie’s story. I very much recommend reading and if you haven’t read Black Bird of the Gallows, I’d recommend that too. Can’t wait to read more from Ms. Kassel.
(I voluntarily reviewed an advance review copy of this book I received for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my open and honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.)
I just finished reading this book and already feel the emptiness inside of me. I tried so hard to read this as slowly as I could, but the saying that all good things come to an end has never rung truer as they do now. Meg Kassel has an extraordinary way of encapsulating her readers with her vivid worldbuilding and beautiful characters.
Essie and Dresden’s story jumped right out of the pages and captured my attention right from the start. I even attempted to guess at specific outcomes, but the truth was so much better than what I’d imagined. I loved the new characters, and the appearance of characters from Black Bird of the Gallows wraps this into the perfect gift. Beekeepers, harbingers of death, the strawman, evil, and romance exist within the pages of this superbly written book. It surpassed all of my wildest expectations and I look forward to what comes next.
{I requested an advanced readers copy from the publisher via NetGalley and made no guarantee of a favorable review. The opinions expressed herein are unbiased and my own.}