The Cruel Prince ~ Review

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Cruel Prince definitely got better the farther into the book you got. The beginning felt kinda slow and wasn’t really all that interesting/captivating. However, the second half of the book really took off and I read the second half in like, an hour and a half it was that entertaining! I was really nervous that this book wouldn’t live up to the hype, but I feel like it really did in some aspects.

The things I liked:

-I loved how complex and crazy the plot was, and how the court was so conniving and were backstabbing people left and right! How the fae were able to get around their inability to lie was really fantastic to read, and was honestly pretty awe inspiring. Not that I’m going to use that as an example, but it may come in handy some day. (Just kidding! Or am I?) I started to guess what was going on with Locke when Taryn started acting strangely whenever Jude would mention him, so that wasn’t really a big surprise to me. What was a surprise was the way Jude handled it, I love that she defended her honor instead of fighting over him.

-I also loved that the world building lived up to my expectations. All these books that we have on faeries say that they are deadly and their world is perilous for humans, and this really shone through in this book. The fae are cruel and deadly, and so is the environment. The bullying that Jude goes through is harsh, but definitely fits in with what we know of the fae and how they treat humans. There is so much cruelty and murder and honestly, its pretty freaking fantastic.

-I love and hate Jude all at the same time. I think she is so wonderfully complicated, but she is also kind of heartless and yeah, she says that her actions are to protect her brother, but really its so that she can have power over the faeries that have had power over her for so long. The fact that she admits that if she stopped to think about the murder of her parents the fear would swallow her whole is something that makes her more relatable. She is absolutely ruthless when it comes to her scheming and getting what she wants to happen. Love it! (And hate it, which I’ll explain later.)

-Cardan is so horrible, but I love him at the same time? He does kind of redeem himself in the second part of the book (I won’t say how because spoilers), so I actually really enjoy his character and cannot wait to see more of him in the next book! I especially cannot wait for the interactions between him and Jude, and I totally ship it! (Even though that seems highly unlikely to happen since they kinda hate each other)

-I have heard people mention the plot twist at the end, and it was really entertaining to watch it play out finally! I wouldn’t quite call it a plot twist, because Jude walks through her decision making process and we can see where it is going, but it was still fantastic and had me flying through the last few pages!

The only things I didn’t like about the book was that the first part was a lot of set up for the second half, so it was a little bit slower. I wouldn’t say that that was necessarily a bad thing because every book does better with some background, and I’m definitely being nit-picky.

The other thing that I didn’t really like is actually also one of the things I liked about the book, which is Jude. I loved her, but at the same time I hated her and thought that she could’ve been a much better person than what she was. I didn’t totally enjoy how heartless she came across, but at the same time I totally understand why.

I was really afraid that this wouldn’t live up to the hype, but for me it really did and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves books about faeries and stabby stabby books!