The moral of the Beastkeeper

     The book I read for my summer reading project was Beastkeeper by Cat Hellisen. The book is about a girl named Sarah, all her life she lived with her mom and dad together. She had a sense that something was wrong with her family and she just accepted it. One night her mother leaves Sarah  and her father, the only reason she gives is that she "can't sit around and wait and watch him(Sarah's father) turn". Later Sarah finds out that her father's family has curse on them that turns them into beasts when they fall in love with someone who doesn't love them back.  Her father takes her to live with her grandparents, who she had never heard of prior to these events. There, Sarah meets her grandmother, Igna and grandfather, Edward. Edward is in the form of a beast and is kept caged in a shed by his wife. Also Sarah begins to fall in love with a boy named Alan. She needs to find away to break the curse before something horrific becomes of her.
     The message of the story to me don't think that beauty is all you have to offer people. Igna and Edward's relationship was based on good looks. It didn't end well for the two. Freya cursed them because she knew that it wouldn't last, because the only reason they were together was looks. Another example of this is, that shows beauty isn't the foundation of a relationship, is when Sarah was a beast Alan didn't leave her.  He didn't see her differently because her outside with different than before. He even cared for her as a human would be cared for even though than wasn't what she was depicted as. Even towards the end Sarah didn't leave Alan because he was blind and he would be able to appreciate her beauty. She didn't leave him because the scars on his face disfigured him. They both stayed together because they liked what was inside of eachother, their feelings and personalities.  Also the cover spoke to me, the cover shows a rose inside a cage. This has no relevance to the story itself. I think this is a reference to Sarah's grandfather, Edward. She saw him as a person, someone who had a soul and has feelings.  Sarah's grandmother, Igna, saw him as a beast. She saw him as what he was displayed us. But Sarah knew that he was a person inside so that's how she thought of him. I think that his soul, what's inside of him is the rose that's inside of the cage. Also the cage that holds the rose is the cage that Igna held Edward in because she couldn't what was inside.