The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

By #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black, the first book in a stunning new series about a mortal girl who finds herself caught in a web of royal faerie intrigue.

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.

Hmm okay. I actually liked this. Honestly wasn't expecting that. I feel like hate everything. I might even change my rating to a 5 stars. Let me sit on it a bit and we'll see.

ya fantasy isn't the genre i usually go to but i wanted to give this book a try because of all the praise i was reading and hearing. but what a disappointment. i knew i was stepping out of my comfort zone and i really tried to get into the atmosphere of the book but i couldn't. i have been reading to book for a month and getting through it was honestly pretty hard. objectively, it's engaging and it can be addictive but personally, i just couldn't get into it. i hated most the characters even the ones we are supposed to appreciate. i found the main character pretty boring and even annoying at times, and while a flawed character isn't inherently a bad-written one (obviously), i just couldn't like her despite her flaws. i wasn't rooting for jude and her motivations were pretty unclear to me. overall, my reading experience was boring. i get why people like it and i thought i would love the ennemies to lovers trope in this but it was not convincing enough for me. i wasn't expecting to love this but i wasn't expecting to hate this neither... i feel bad saying all of this because i've read worst novels and if i'm being objective it's not terrible. however, i'm not giving up on ya fantasy because i used to love this genre earlier in my teenage years.

This was amazing. So complex and well written. And that ending, I need book 2 now!!!

3.5 Good pacing and action and Black has always done well with world building. In spite of that I found Jude saying “xxx sucks” jarring and both out of character and out of world. Think my BOB team will like it and I'm interested enough to read/skim the next one.