- Pub. Date: January 28, 2014
- Publisher: Balzer + Bray
- Pages:352
- Goodreads/Amazon/Book Depository
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.
First Line: I was raised to marry a monster.
Review: I
finished reading Cruel Beauty a few days ago and I'm still trying to get
my thought process together. I love retellings and there were things I
really liked about the book and then there were certain things that I
didn't.
One thing for sure I enjoyed about the novel as a whole was the characters I found it so different to read a book where there was no one not even the main heroine who was just a good natured human being. Instead every character had qualities that would make you never want to know the person in real life, but with that all being said I still really liked Ignifex and Nyx which honestly I'm still trying to figure out why...and when it comes down to it I think they had every right to be the way they were due to the injustice that was given to them especially Nyx I can understand why she despised her sister, and hated her father. As for Ignifex I didn't know what to make of him until we learned that he wasn't as much in control of things as we thought he was.
As far as the romance I really started to enjoy the relationship between Ignifex and Nyx. What I didn't care for was the brief love triangle we encountered although I have to give it to the author it was unique and for that I'm so grateful.
One thing that bugged me the most was the pacing. The book started off very slow for me with a ton of info dumping about the world and it's mythology I kind of found myself a little confused but things started making sense as the story progressed. I loved the middle of the book I think I flew through those pages and nothing was able to keep me from devouring those pages, and then the ending came and I don't know I felt like I was expecting more then the way it wrapped up.
Overall I liked the book it wasn't the greatest retelling I've read but if your a fan of fantasy, fairy tale retellings and Greek mythology along with some pretty awesome world building I would say check it out.
One thing for sure I enjoyed about the novel as a whole was the characters I found it so different to read a book where there was no one not even the main heroine who was just a good natured human being. Instead every character had qualities that would make you never want to know the person in real life, but with that all being said I still really liked Ignifex and Nyx which honestly I'm still trying to figure out why...and when it comes down to it I think they had every right to be the way they were due to the injustice that was given to them especially Nyx I can understand why she despised her sister, and hated her father. As for Ignifex I didn't know what to make of him until we learned that he wasn't as much in control of things as we thought he was.
As far as the romance I really started to enjoy the relationship between Ignifex and Nyx. What I didn't care for was the brief love triangle we encountered although I have to give it to the author it was unique and for that I'm so grateful.
One thing that bugged me the most was the pacing. The book started off very slow for me with a ton of info dumping about the world and it's mythology I kind of found myself a little confused but things started making sense as the story progressed. I loved the middle of the book I think I flew through those pages and nothing was able to keep me from devouring those pages, and then the ending came and I don't know I felt like I was expecting more then the way it wrapped up.
Overall I liked the book it wasn't the greatest retelling I've read but if your a fan of fantasy, fairy tale retellings and Greek mythology along with some pretty awesome world building I would say check it out.
Memorable Quotes:~"If one of us had to die, it ought to be the one with poison in her heart. "
~But I was a girl who had broken her sister's heart and for a moment liked it. I had left somebody in torment and liked it. I didn't want to keep being that person.
