Review: Cruel Beauty

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am giving this one four out of five stars because while I really really enjoyed it, it is not one of my favorites. I try (***not the best at this***) to leave my five star reviews scarce so that they are more valuable and authentic, but I am not sure I always do that. :/
Cruel Beauty is a phenomenal retelling of Beauty and the Beast, one of my favorite fairy tales of all time. The "beast" in the book is complex and both alluring and repulsive at the same time. I really liked how, not only is he kinda freaky looking, but his attitude and behavior is also not the best. Same goes for the "Belle" of the story. Nyx has a temper and can stand up for herself and defend herself. The Disney Belle can to, but Nyx is something else. If one of your concerns when you pick up a book is that the characters are weak, this is not one of them. The other thing I really liked about it was the tie-in with mythology.

This book was slightly harder to read than others that I have read. It still is readable, but there were times that I had to go back and even stop for a moment to process what was going on. A part of that may have just been the plot line, because that is pretty complicated too.

So, in the end, I would definitely recommend this book to almost everybody. There are strong characters, nice fantasy and mythology, and it has Beauty and the Beast in it.

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