Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

My Rating: 5 out of 5

I’m finally writing this review after a week and a half of sitting on it. I’ve been a little busy with the gosling (this is her new name since she’s a silly goose like her daddy, who may be called Goose henceforth), but mostly it’s just incredibly hard for me to write a review for a book that I love this much. I try hard not to write gushing reviews often, mostly because there are very few books that deserve it, and I think that people use reviews to get fair opinions of a book before delving in and spending so much of their time reading it. This is an exception, however. Much like this one (which also happens to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling, perhaps not a coincidence).

I’m in the midst of a fairy tale retelling kick and this was the second one I read in a week’s time (there are 3 more sitting on my shelf and several on my Kindle that will be part of this adventure into once-upon-a-time land). This was the better of the two for that week, but was also one of my new favorite books. Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite stories to begin with, and I was not let down by this one. I feel like I should also admit that this was a book that I actually paid for, which has not happened for a while since I usually check them out at work or get an advanced reader. Even paying for it, it was worth the $9.

So, per usual, we’ll go with the good and the not so good (well, I’ll try to come up with what I didn’t love about it, though it will be hard).

What I loved:

*The characters. They were realistic and flawed and beautiful. I loved Nyx and Ignifex together. I loved Nyx and Shade together. I loved that no one was perfect, but at the same time they were.

*The plot/mythology. I loved the back story of the Gentle Lord and how it unfolded. The twist on the classic was a nice one.

*The setting. I’ve found that my favorite retellings tend to be set essentially in “once upon a time.” These places could be anywhere, and something about this really appeals to me.

*The ending. I like books to have closure at the end, but you can still walk away thinking about where the characters would be now.

What I didn’t love so much:

*The father. It irritated me that he was never remorseful. Though, he was still well-written as this character.

*At times I got really frustrated with Nyx. Even though she was believable, I still got irritated with her.

*The ending. It shouldn’t have had one.

I should put this in the not so good column, I guess. I would classify this as mature teen. There weren't sex scenes, but there were implications about it. I would recommend that parents read this first if their younger teen (13-15) wants to read it.

As a whole, I would recommend this to pretty much anyone that I could. If you like fairy tales, if you like romance or fantasy, if you like books at all. Okay, maybe not for everyone, but I really do think a wide variety of people would enjoy this, and I loved it.