BOOKS ¦ Review: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Name: The Cruel Prince
Author: Holly Black
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Date Published: 2018
Rating: 5/5

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.

- From Goodreads.

When I started The Cruel Prince I felt a little uncertain about how much I would like it, but by the time I finished it I really loved it, and the ending definitely made me eager to pick up the next book in the series, The Wicked King.
The setting was really interesting and made the story intriguing to read. Before I started the book I was not sure how I would feel about the combination of the modern world and the world of faerie, but despite how different the worlds were, the way they were put together in the story made sense and made the story feel quite unique and refreshing. I have not read so many stories where the faerie world is put next to the modern one as most books that I have read with faeries involve a historical setting rather than a modern one, and I do love fantasy stories set in a historical world, but it felt new to read one with a modern world and I liked that.
I also really liked the main character, Jude. Some people say she is an unlikeable character and that she is meant to be that way, but I found I genuinely liked her. I enjoyed that she took action rather than remaining passive, and even if she made mistakes, I understood why she had made the choices she had. It was some of the other characters, in fact, that I did not like and that annoyed me. But I felt satisfied because Jude would be annoyed and angry with them too and addressed it and expressed why and how they had made her feel that way. It felt enjoyable to read a character who wouldn't let people just get away with it when they hurt or affected her in some way.
From the beginning of the book, and in fact from the description of the book, we know that Jude and her sisters live with and were raised by the man who murdered their parents, and at first that did feel a little strange and I was not sure if I would like how they mostly accepted it. But I think Jude felt conflicted by it too and she was not always certain that her reaction to it was normal, so I think that helped make it feel like a less unrealistic plot point in the novel.
I enjoyed the development of the relationship between Cardan and Jude. It was very fascinating to slowly learn more about him and see Jude's changing perspective on him as he gradually became a more three-dimensional character. I definitely want to read more of the two of them and their dynamic which makes me really excited to read The Wicked King.