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Review: Cruel Beauty

By Rosamund Hodge
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“Behold, I come to you bereft of my father’s name and exiled from my mother’s hearth; therefore your name shall be mine and I shall be a daughter of your house; your Lares shall be mine and them I will honour; where you go, I go; where you die, I die and there, will I be buried.” - Page 35

Title: Cruel Beauty
Author: Rosamund Hodge
Book: stand alone? Though a novella will be out in april
Genre: Young Adult
Found: Goodreads/Ms4Tune?
Rating: 5 Voodoos

Beauty and the Beast has always been someone else’s favourite fairy tale which, I therefore felt, meant it couldn’t be mine too, so I’ve never claimed it as such. In fact, I’ve always maintained that Sleeping Beauty, the complete opposite, was the fairy tale I loved most. But this book has forced me to face the truth I’ve been hiding even from myself, I’m a sucker for a Beauty and the Beast retelling.

“Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl’s journey to fulfil her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.” – Goodreads

She was born to marry him and raised to destroy him. The spare daughter, Nyx resented her fate but still she put on her gown and left everything she knew to fulfil the bargain her father had made with the evil lord of their kingdom, because she knew her duty. The plan is to seduce him and then destroy his castle around him to break the 900 year old curse her people suffer under.
But the man she meets is not the towering terror she was expecting. Charming and a delight to bicker with, he beguiles her despite her determination he won’t. And then there’s his shadow…
The more she finds out the less sense it all makes, but there is one thing she does know; when it comes down to it, the fate of the kingdom is more important than the fate of one person, even if that person is the only one she’s ever loved.

This book, I don’t know where to start. I read it really very quickly, I found it such an easy read but it was one of those rare books that I didn’t want to rush my way through. So instead of staying up too late I finished it this morning so I had time to savour it. This may sound contradictory, that it was so good that I could put it down, it doesn’t mean the suspense wasn’t killing me, but I wanted to have my head in that world a little longer than one afternoon and evening.
As always it ended too fast, (WHAT HAPPENED NEXT??! It’s imperative to my sanity to know!)
I ran through and double backed on so many different theories as to what was happening and which parts of the fairy tale would appear it was so exhaustingly exciting. It just blew away all of the sides of the box I expected it to fit inside and I’m so glad it did.

I loved this book and I cant even tell you why because then you’ll know the entire plot and wont need to read it. It made me realise possible flaws in the Disney retelling too, little things that are not important to a story, but important to people.
I loved how, in the end, they were the perfect match for each other and how cleverly everything fit together and was forced apart. How different the story line was so that it was almost not a retelling at all but at the same time it was the most perfect retelling ever…..

I could be a little besotted but I have to say this right here is how to do a debut novel correctly.
Will be keeping my eyes out for more books by this author, that’s for sure

pamspaein

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