So you know the basic idea of the fairy-tale and folklore-inspired fiction: Princess Aurore had a christening party which was interrupted by a slighted uninvited guest who casts a curse over the poor child. In the fantasy fiction curse when she turns 16 she will prick her finger and one drop of blood will fall and Aurore will die. Another guest utters a counterspell in the suspenseful tale, and the guest at least is not a fairy in this book.
Like in the traditional once upon a time, Aurore will not die, she will fall into a deep, deep sleep that will last 100 years until she is awakened by the kiss of a prince. This was similar enough to the original tale, that I felt comfortable sinking into Beauty Sleep, but it was the differences, especially in the woman of steel Princess Aurore, that kept me intrigued. In this character-driven version, Aurore's older cousin Oswald lives in the palace and expects to be the heir to the kingdom, (mostly due to the dire predictions made about Aurore's life expectancy).
The first part of the book was very compelling. It detailed Aurore's life in the palace, and how Oswald gained her parent's permission to allow Aurore to roam the palace gardens, despite the angry woman's curse upon her. Aurore the beauty gained plenty of freedoms after that and her parents became more relaxed in their protectiveness of her.
In the second part of the book Aurore runs away from the palace and meets her magic destiny. I don't want to give any of the secrets away so I won't detail this very much except to say that I mostly guessed the prince's twist, which was a little disappointed. My other complaint is that the author really spent a good portion of pages saying nothing at all about the princess.
There was a lot of rambling and while some passages gave good insights into the characters and the ideas of magic and love, quite a bit was pointless for the legendary character Sleeping Beauty. Beauty Sleep is still very enjoyable and is wonderfully written despite its flaws, and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.