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Informationen zum Autor Cameron Dokey is the author of nearly thirty young adult novels. Her fairy tales include The Storyteller’s Daughter , Sunlight and Shadow , and Golden . She has also written the #1 bestselling How Not to Spend Your Senior Year . She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and four cats. Klappentext Absence makes the heart grow fonderNand love grow strongerNin three romantic fairy tale retellings from the author of "Once." This volume includes "Belle, Sunlight and Shadow, " and "Winter's Child."Kissed I’VE HEARD IT SAID—AND my guess is you have too—that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But I’ve never been certain it’s true. Think about it for a moment. It sounds nice. I’ll give you that. A way for every face to be beautiful, if only you wait for the right pair of eyes. If only you wait long enough. I’ll even grant you that beauty isn’t universal. A girl who is considered drop-dead gorgeous in a town by the sea may find herself completely overlooked in a village the next county over. Even so, beauty is in the eye of the beholder doesn’t quite work, does it? Because there’s something missing, and I can even tell you what: the belief we all harbor in our secret heart of hearts that beauty stands alone. That, by its very nature, it is obvious. In other words, Beauty with a capital B. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Now that’s another statement entirely. And what it means, as far as I can see, is that those of us whose looks aren’t of the capital B variety can pretty much stop holding our breaths, stop waiting for the right eyes to show up and gaze upon us. Our Beauty—or, more precisely, our lack thereof—has already been established. It’s as plain as the noses on our small b faces. That sounds more like the way things actually work, doesn’t it? I suppose you could say that finding out just what a pair of eyes can do, and what they can’t, is what the story I’m about to tell you is really all about. It will come as no surprise that it is, of course, my story. Which means I should probably back up and introduce myself. Annabelle Evangeline Delaurier. That is my name. After my father’s mother and my mother’s mother, in that order. But, though it was my father who decided the entirety of what I would be called, it was my mother who sealed my fate and set my tale in motion. For she was the one who decreed I would be known as Belle, a name that means Beauty in the land of my birth. There were problems with this decision, though nobody realized it at the time. Two problems, to be precise: my older sisters, who displayed such extraordinary Beauty that they were famous for miles around. My oldest sister was born at straight-up midnight, on a night so clear and cold it snatched the breath. A night that made the stars burn sharp and bright as knives. The baby’s hair was as dark as the arc of heaven overhead, her eyes a blue both fierce and sparkling, like the stars. In celebration of my sister’s arrival, Maman, who has a tendency to be extravagant even in life’s simple moments, named the infant Celestial Heavens, having earlier extracted a promise from my father that she could name their first child anything she wanted. As I’m sure I don’t need to point out, Celestial Heavens is quite a mouthful. Fortunately for all concerned, and for my sister most of all, my father’s more practical approach to life won out. Celestial Heavens the baby might be, but even before the ink on her birth certificate was dry, my sister was being called Celeste, as she has been from that day forward. My second sister was born on the first day of the month of April, just as the sun rose over the horizon. He...
