Beauty of the Beast

Dean
All my life, I dreamed about making the long trip from Australia to Canada to study forestry amid the old-growth stands of the Pacific Northwest. Now here I am, living the dream. Of course, nothing''s perfect. The only housing I can find is renting a room from a grumpy, reclusive guy who doesn’t seem to want me around. I should keep out of his way and focus on my studies, but there’s something about him that keeps drawing me in. I feel less homesick when I’m with him, and maybe I can make a difference for more than just the trees.
Adam
Life as I knew it ended with my horrific accident ten years ago. There''s no point to my existence now, but I can''t seem to stop living, so I hide my battered carcass in my mountain home. There, I can wander from room to room and no one stares, no one laughs, no one even remembers I exist. Until I make the mistake of offering a stranded Aussie a room to rent. It should''ve been a simple favor—two men with our own spaces, ignoring each other. Instead, he''s always close by, and he won''t let me wallow, and what''s worse, I think I''m starting to like that. But there''s no way someone like me can have a future with someone like him. Right?
The Beauty of the Beast is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set in the wilds of British Columbia, where an Aussie forester a long way from home falls for the untouchable man he shouldn’t want. The novel has moderate angst, a feisty foreigner, and what happens when someone trusts again.