Book: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Published January 2018 by Little, Brown Books For Young Readers|370 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the hardcover from the library

Series: The Folk Of The Air #1

Genre: YA Fantasy

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 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.

As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal 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.

This is one of those books that everyone seems to love.  In general, it seems like people seem to love Holly Black, but this one was not for me.

The idea is interesting- a girl, taken away to Faerie, and living in a world where they hate humans.  There’s a lot of intrigue and deception, and I am interested enough to see what happens.  I think the hype did get to me, though.  I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what people were saying about The Cruel Prince, though I knew going into it that a lot of people were excited about it and were reading it.  I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s on the meh end of things.

I really thought we’d have more of Prince Cardan, but he wasn’t as important as I thought he would be.  I feel like he might have more of a role in the next one, but he might not.  Really, the book was more about Jude and how she hated being mortal, and wanted to be Fae.

I don’t know, I think I was expecting something more awesome, and in this case, I think I was let down by the fact that apparently everyone else seems to love this book.  Except for me, obviously.

Honestly, though, I couldn’t begin to tell you anything else about the book.  I wasn’t a huge fan of Jude, though her sister Vivi seems to be awesome.  I was expecting revenge on the guy who killed her parents, but that didn’t happen, and it was slightly disappointing.  Maybe she was so focused on becoming Fae that she wasn’t out for revenge.  I can’t say I’m surprised, considering she’d either be out for revenge or wanting to become Fae so she can belong.  It’s pretty predictable but I did keep reading, so it has that going for it.

3 stars.  I liked it just fine, but I don’t seem to have the same love for it that everyone else does.  Still, I’ll probably read the next one to see what happens next.