The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Rating: 5/5
I LOVED this book, let me just start with that. I heard about this book through many of the bookstagrammers that I follow who received ARCs. While I was at first a little apprehensive of reading this book due to my distaste for The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, also written by Holly Black. But, my fellow book-lovers convinced me to give it a shot, and boy am I glad they did.
First of all, look how gorgeous this cover is! And the title alone is enough to entice me. Bad-boy princes are my weakness.
The story begins with Jude, her twin sister Taryn, and their half-sister (unbeknownst to them) Vivienne aka Vivi, in their house in the human world. Shortly after Vivi’s real father, Madoc, a war general of the faerie realm, has come to reclaim his wife and his daughter. When it is clear the mother will not come, Madoc kills her, and her human husband. Madoc feels that Vivi and her sisters are now his responsibility, and steals them away to the Faerie realm.
10 years later, we learn about Jude and her sister’s lives. Brought up like the Gentry, the girls are treated well, except by their fellow classmates. Cue the cruel prince himself, Cardan. The youngest born of the royal family, he is last in line for the throne, and an all around royal jerk. Him and his band of friends, who are all high born faeries, bully Jude and her sister. Jude and Taryn are human in a land of Faeries, and if they were not the daughters of a general, they would be servants, or worse. Humans do not always survive well in the realm of Faerie. And Cardan and his friends do not think they belong.
Jude could care less about whether they like her or not, she just wants to do well in a school tournament and be granted knighthood, but Taryn has other hopes and dreams. Hopes that include a proposal from a certain mystery character.
What made this book stand out to me is how Jude is such a morally gray character. In the beginning, she expresses the constant fear she has. And by the middle and end, she discovers her strength and her agency and stands up for herself and what she believes in. She wants to do what she thinks is right, no matter the consequences.
I don’t want to name names about the love interest at all! Mainly because it is barely there in this book, and I suspect more in the next two books as this is a trilogy, but also because I want you to make your own decisions! But I will say this: if the author didn’t want me to love him, then she shouldn’t have given him such a sob story and a flower crown.
I will leave you with this:
May you figure out who wrote it on your own
