Cruel Beauty
by Rosamund Hodge
Published: January 28, 2014
Genres: Fairy Tale, Retelling, Romance, Young Adult
Format: eARC (352 pages)
Source: For Review
Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.
Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
Cruel Beauty was a very dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast that had an unexpected mix of Greek Mythology. The story opens on a very stiff and formal life for the main character Nyx like a dark version of Downton Abbey. Then we get a nice, long lecture on How This World Works that I found hard to get through.
I was entertained by the story but I really didn’t like the cop-out device of Nyx having “no choice” to create these dramatic situations. Nyx is engaged to a demon since birth because her father made a bargain and now she has no choice but to marry him. This bothers me for two reason. 1. It takes away the self-sacrifice element of Beauty and the Beast that I love but, more importantly, think was the main point of the fairy tale. 2. Her dad is an idiot. And 3 — okay apparently there are more than reasons why this bothers me — she doesn’t “have” to do anything. It made the main character seem very passive about her life. She was very negative and spiteful all the time. I didn’t like her all that much, which is fine, but if she’s going to be unlikable then at least make me understand why she did things. I never understood why she did things.
I did like the quest of trying to find the demon’s name which was one of the few elements remaining from the original fairy tale. The castle was a wonderful adventure full of strange rooms like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
I won’t spoil the ending, but I didn’t like it. I felt like the ending did not have anything to do with what they had been doing for almost the whole novel. I felt like we spent the whole novel doing one thing and she suddenly decides to change course and last minute do something very drastic. And as the books comes to a close, I felt like the characters were so completely different that they weren’t even the same characters anymore. They felt like strangers and I didn’t care all that much what happened to them.
Overall, it was too dark of a fairy tale retelling with poor world building and unlikable characters that just wasn’t for me even though I did like the Greek Mythology element of the story.
Content Rating: Medium, for quite a bit of dark innuendo (that is thankfully not very graphic) about a girl trying to seduce a demon which I found mildly disturbing.
This post contains affiliate links and I receive a small percentage of sales made through these links. I received this book for review from the publisher, Harper Collins, in exchange for an honest review. I was not told what to say, I was not paid to write this review and all the opinions expressed are my own. I read an Advanced Reading Copy for this review.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
Kami says
Too bad! I was really looking forward to this one. I’ll still read it.
kathy says
That’s too bad! The cover looked really cool and I was kind of interested in reading it. But it sounds like it’s not the book for me either.
Pamela D says
Sorry to hear that this was a dud for you. I have noticed that people either really enjoy this book or find it lacking.
Jenny says
I’ve heard the same sentiments from others. I may still have to try it out of pure curiosity. I’ll probably regret it. I hate when main characters are unlikable.
Ems S says
The ending totally didn’t fit for me too. It felt rushed and really awkward. I also felt like the characters weren’t true to who they’d been set up to be.
Emma @ HopefulHappiness says
Yeah, I didn’t really love this one either. This seemed like a sure thing for me since I love retellings and fair tales. There were so many parts that were difficult for me to get through and I completely agree with you about Nyx.