Blog Tour Of Curses and Kisses (St Rosetta’s #1)| Sandhya Menon

Heyyyy Guys ,

So today the Blog, BookTube and Bookstagram Tour for #ofcursesandkisses kicks-off officially!

Of Curses and Kisses is a Beauty and the Beast retelling set in modern-day Colorado. For those who enjoyed reading A Curse So Dark and Lonely, I can guarantee that you would love this book just as much (just don’t expect it to be as dark or action-packed).

Will the princess save the beast?

For Princess Jaya Rao, nothing is more important than family. When the loathsome Emerson clan steps up their centuries-old feud to target Jaya’s little sister, nothing will keep Jaya from exacting her revenge. Then Jaya finds out she’ll be attending the same elite boarding school as Grey Emerson, and it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. She knows what she must do: Make Grey fall in love with her and break his heart.

But much to Jaya’s annoyance, Grey’s brooding demeanour and lupine blue eyes have drawn her in. There’s simply no way she and her sworn enemy could find their fairy-tale ending… Right? His Lordship Grey Emerson is a misanthrope.

Thanks to an ancient curse by a Rao matriarch, Grey knows he’s doomed once he turns eighteen. Sequestered away in the mountains at St. Rosetta’s International Academy, he’s lived an isolated existence—until Jaya Rao bursts into his life. Sparkling and elegant, Jaya’s, unlike anyone Grey, has ever met. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that she’s hiding something. Something that might just have to do with the rose-shaped ruby pendant around her neck…

As the stars conspire to keep them apart, Jaya and Grey grapple with questions of love, loyalty, and whether it’s possible to write your own happy ending.

You can find below behind what inspired author Sandhya Menon to bring Jaya and Grey alive in Of Curses and Kisses.

How did you get the idea for Of Curses and Kisses?

It came to me one night while my family and I were staying in a hotel in Colorado. This was about four years ago now, and I was still working on When Dimple Met Rishi.

But I sat bolt upright in my bed in the middle of the night and scrabbled to write down something in Jaya’s (the female main character’s) voice. I had no idea at the time who was talking or what the story was about, but what I wrote down became chapter one in the book. After I got some sleep, I spent more time thinking about it and realized this was a boarding school-set story about modern-day royals.

The “Beauty and the Beast contemporary retelling” part came still later! Of Curses and Kisses was very much an evolving idea in progress until I sold it to my publisher as a trilogy.

Why did you want to write this story?

I’ve always been a huge, huge fan of boarding school-set novels. At the time the idea came to me, I was completely enamoured of Gossip Girl and fairy tale retellings, too, and thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a series that encapsulated all of these feelings and ideas but was a more diverse representation of the population than we’ve had in the past?” And then I went, “Waiiiit a minute…I’m an author!” Also, I got to go to Aspen to do book research, which is always a plus in my book!

What was your favourite scene in the story?

There were a few scenes that I absolutely ADORED writing! Let’s see… the first meeting in the library, the hot tub scene, the middle-of-the-night snowball fight, any scene with Caterina and Rahul or Isha in it! So many. 🙂

What’s your favourite fairy tale?

I love the classic Disney ones—Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Frog Prince, and Sleeping Beauty are a few I really cherish!

Will there be more books in the universe?

Definitely! I sold the series as a trilogy, with two companion novels to follow Of Curses and Kisses. The next books will follow different main characters, but you’ll definitely see cameos of the people you’ve come to know and love!

Click here to read my full review.

Are you like me who loves to listen to music while you read? Hit the link that’ll direct you straight to my Spotify playlist.

These are the songs available on the playlist:

To learn more about the author and to follow the other bloggers and see what contents will they be posting, you can check the schedule here.

Sometimes I get very tired of being who other people think I am.
She couldn’t break his heart. Because if she did, it was her, not him, who was the beast.
There were few dark moods books couldn’t fix.
Bit by bit, she was chipping at the block of stone he’d always surrounded himself with. Bit by bit, she was unearthing who he really was underneath. And to his astonishment, Grey was okay with that. He was kind of excited to see who he was underneath too, even if just briefly.
Isn’t it funny? The beautiful princess did turn the beast into a man after all.”
“But here’s a secret, the beast was the handsome prince all along. He just didn’t know it.”