Cruel Beauty (Cruel Beauty Universe #1) by Rosamund Hodge
Genres: Fantasy (YA)
Pages: 342
Goodreads

Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.
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.
With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.
As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

This book didn’t even hook me in the beginning. I actually struggled to get through the first 100 pages, but for the sake of writing a review, I powered through it.

The first 100 pages consist of a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo about Hermetic sciences (earth, air, fire & water), Greek mythology, rituals, traditions, demons, etcetera. Honestly, most of it was overdone and confusing, like the book could not decide what religious direction it wanted to take.

When you finally make it past all of that nonsense, the story just takes an even bigger dive. When Nyx (the main character) is in the castle, she has a lot of free time so she explores the house to find the Hearts of Air, Fire, Earth and Water (something she needs to destroy the castle – also something that is confusing). She quickly finds that the castle changes, walls move, rooms are illusions etc. This is something that would have been entertaining to read more about, but it was literally one sentence… I had to go back and reread it because I completely missed it. What is more prominent in that chapter is that she gets lost and completely gives up after trying 3 doors. You then have to suffer through an ENTIRE page of her complaining about how she’s never going to find food and is going to die because she tried 3 doors and cannot find the dining room. These lengthy and dramatic episodes occur often throughout the book. Shouldn’t she be a little more emotionally stable if she’s going to save the entire kingdom?!

Then there’s the love triangle. Actually, it’s an insta-love triangle – within days she’s in love. Ugh.

Meet Nyx, she’s been betrothed to the ruling demon since she was born because her father struck a bargain. She resents her family because of this; she hates her sister, who is the ‘favorite’ daughter, hates her father for making this bargain but still wants his attention, and her aunt because she’s been in a relationship with her father since her mother died. Whatever her reasons for hating her family are, it just got annoying to hear about it for most of the book. If she is supposed to be this strong woman who is going to save all of Arcadia by sacrificing herself and killing Ignifex, shouldn’t she be a little less angsty and more emotionally stable? Within the first few pages I already knew I was going to loathe her character.

I don’t think I really need to go into much detail in this category if you’ve read the above categories. Just in case, here is a summary: There are a lot of unnecessary scenes making the pacing choppy and portions of the book hard to get through. While the writing is okay, it was the main character that ruined any great writing because I was so distracted with my agitation towards Nyx.

This book was just a confusing mess of info-dumps and fickle characters. I think it had potential (A Court of Thorns and Roses anyone?), but it just lacked. The attempt at incorporating mythology and magic did not blend well with the story (there was even time-travel at the end), the characters were infuriating and the ending felt rushed and confusing. Parts of the plot were unexplained, or if they were it got lost, which left me wanting more. It was just a hodge-podge of different ideas that ended up not meshing well together. A really disappointing addition to the popular fairy-tale retelling genre.

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Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
World Building
Romance
Overall:	1 / 5