The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Alright, besties, we’re back with another book review! It’s currently The Holiday Season, and my rules regarding reading around the holidays can be summed up in one distinct sentence: read to escape, beotches. That’s it. That’s my whole motto around what I read during the holidays. This holiday season was chaotic and stressful, to say the least, and I’ll be posting a recap right after this review. All you need to know right now is that to counteract the effects of all that stress from the holidays, I wanted to read some interesting or exciting books I had been putting off. The Cruel Prince was one of those because I had seen it recommended many times as an awesome read and super fun, so I wanted to escape to that type of fantasy world between the dates of Dec. 16th and the 23rd.

So yeah, my goal was to read a super fun and distracting fantasy novel so that I could have fun while reading instead of forcing myself to read something educational. God forbid! In regards to that goal, I 100% succeeded! I had so much fun reading The Cruel Prince, which I was not exactly expecting because I’ve been reading a lot less fantasy lately, especially good fantasy, and I was originally scared to start the book because of the tail business, iykyk. Anyway, I had a few friends personally recommend and it’s all over BookTok, so I decided to give it a try. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, let me tell you what happened. I was pleasantly surprised. I had a great time, lots of fun with the characters, worldbuilding was on point, and I really, really liked Jude. That’s a bit uncommon for me because I don’t always love or relate to the main character in books, but Jude was just awesome; super spunky, smart, and great at outthinking everyone, and underestimated again and again. I just love when a character has an awesome comeback no one saw coming and I was shook by the plot twists and turns.

The book was super great and I’d read it again, but I want to know everyone’s thoughts on the rest of the series/Holly Black’s other books before I continue. After finishing The Cruel Prince around Christmas time, I got two new books for Christmas. One of them was Icebreaker, which I was dying to read, so I already finished it. That means I’ve kind of moved on sticking with the rest of the Folk of the Air Series, but I’m not opposed to picking it back up. What are y’all’s thoughts and suggestions? Should I read the other books in the series, or are they not as good as The Cruel Prince?

Also, sidenote, maybe it’s just because I just finished Icebreaker so I’m obsessing over those men, but I had lots of fun with Cardan. First off, I didn’t understand his hype until the last 10-15% of the book, because he and Jude are “enemies” until then. But, from that last 10%, I’m honestly down bad for that man/faerie. Who doesn’t love a guy that’s obsessed with his dagger-wielding wife? Certainly not me. Also, in case you guys were wondering about my thoughts about the lack of smut in the book, I wasn’t super disappointed in that. Y’all know smut doesn’t entirely make or break a book for me because I don’t love it that much. However, if there is going to be smut (which, in The Cruel Prince, there’s very little of) you have to do it right. In that regard, Holly Black hit the bulls-eye; I loved her smut writing, even if there was very little of it.

Genre: fantasy, Y/A, fiction, romance

Age: 12+

Rating: 8.75/10