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.

Review:

What. The. Hell.

I have tried to write this review so many times and every single time I delete it and start again. However, what I want to know is where can I get back those hours I spent reading this book because this was a waste of my time.

Also are the people who are rating it 4 or 5 stars reading the same book as me? Did I miss something that shines through the scribble on paper? I don’t know but if you find out please let me know.

Let’s start with the hype about this book; everyone was raving about how brilliant it was. Even the Queen of YA fantasy Bardugo said it was wonderful. Hearing all of this buzz gets you ecstatic, it forces you to go out push any child in front of you out of the way so you can get your hands on this book. However it wasn’t until I got home and the book sat there on my bookcase and I began to have a real bad feeling about this book. Tell you what folks my gut was bloody right!

Let’s start with the opening chapter cause that was the only part of the book I actually enjoyed, where a raging lunatic of a Fae breaks into the main characters home, kills her parents and kidnaps her and her sisters. Brilliant. Great start. Surely this book can’t be so bad right? Wrong…

Let’s just do a long ass break down of why you do not need to waste your time:

There was no world building. Nothing. Not even enough for you to use you imagination. Nothing. This is pretty much the world building you get: “This is fae world” and that is it! There is no real description to what the world is, their history or what is going on. It pretty much felt you like you missed a year of study and now you are sitting in your exam, in dead silence, with a dull look on your face while you scratch your head in utter confusion. And that ladies and gentlemen is what I did throughout the entire book.

Now to the characters… I actually didn’t care for any of them. There was nothing that caused you to relate, feel pain for or even connect with a character. Every single one was rude, snobby and only gave a monkeys fart about themselves and no one else. And what annoyed me the most was all the childish chit chat. No one adult conversation happened throughout the book, not one. Picture a bus full of young children: none of the conversation flows. You can’t keep up with what they are trying to say. They all fight over the candy and pretty much a majority sits there and sulks.

Ohh now onto the romance. Again nothing was built up to it, no built up tension, no flirting an no indecent thoughts. Just children blabbering and then a kiss out of nowhere. I also feel like Jude may have a FTD (fae transmitted disease) cause that girl gets around.

One thing that actually annoyed me the most was the fact I felt like I was back in high school, where all the spiteful popular kids were trying to rip each other apart. Was this what Black wanted? An over dramatized high school fight over pretty much nothing? Like I said before the characters only care about themselves, not even your family give a crap about you in this book.

I have read a few of Black’s other books and she can write, I promise you that, but The Cruel Prince seems like it was just published under her name, the writing style has completely changed, there was no depth, time or effort present in this book.

Overall I feel like this book was just dot points was thrown at you and you were just meant to guess what the hell is going on. I know this is a ranty review but I hardly ever hate books and I found myself as a Holly Black fan, terribly disappointed.

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Rating: 2/5

ISBN: 9781471407031