Rating: 10/10
Books Like This: Throne of Glass Series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, The Iron Fey Series
For People Who Like: Romance, action, betrayal, unpredictable plots, enemies to lovers
*Mild Spoilers Ahead
Synopsis:
Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.
And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.
Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.
To win a place at the Court, she must defy him—and face the consequences.
In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.
Introduction:
So I found this book mostly by accident, I was just lookin around pinterest on day and I come across a bunch of book recommendation tiktoks. And as I'm going through these I just keep seeing "The Cruel Prince" over and over and over again. So, I decided I just had to get my hand on this book. I've always loved the fey/faerie arc in books (especially after I read TOG and ACOTAR) so this was pretty on par for me. This book took me about 6 or 7 hours to read. But, before the review let me just say WOW, this was an interesting book.
Rating Explanation/Review:
So, right off the bat, one of the first things we read in the book was how Jude's parents were killed by her half sister's (Vivi) father who her mother left because she fell in love with another human while in faerie and while married to her husband/Vivi's father/Madoc/Jude and Taryn's adoptive father. I know right, talk about complicated. Madoc took in Jude and Taryn because he felt responsible because he was married to their mother. And that's pretty much where the story starts off.
On detail I really loved about this book was how natural Jude was, like she loved Madoc (even though he killed her parents) because he raised her like his own daughter, but she was also terrified of everyone around her because she knew she was weaker than them because she was human. She talks about how her fear was so deep, it seeped into her bones, but she learned to live with it and ignore it.
When I started this book (it was one of those books where you know who the love interest is from the synopsis (or so I thought)) I thought I was just going to be waiting around for Jude and Cardan to get over their mutual hatred of each other and fall in love. MAN, it was NOTHING like that. I mean when I say they hated each other...like they despised each other. But, you could also tell there was an attraction there. I wasn't that surprised when I found out why Cardan hated Jude that much, but I was surprised by how stubborn Jude is throughout the book despite her fears. I don't honestly know if that's admirable or the dumbest thing ever. Anyway, there wasn't as much romance as I would've liked nor am I used to, but I have a feeling this series will make up for that somehow.
Okay, so this book gave me whiplash from all of the twists and turns (in the best possible way), I don't know if it was the same for everyone else reading this book, but I had no idea what Jude was thinking when she was making her plan most of the time and at the end of the book I was just sitting there thinking "damn Jude, I mean I know you didn't really have a choice but, that's low". I mean Jude is really smart and her moral compass is pretty straight compared to some other main characters. But, she can also be quite power hungry and never really satisfied. This book takes "the more you have, the more you want." to another level. This book reminded me of Throne of Glass because it was like when Aelin was making plans and the other characters had no idea and we had no idea. It was annoyingly exciting just like in those books.
Overall, this book was really interesting, unique and I completely recommend it.
Congratulations to Holly Black and I wish you luck on all of your future endeavors.