Cruel Beauty

Cruel Beauty
by Rosamund Hodge
Hardcover, 352 pages
Published January 28, 2014
9780062224736

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-poowerful, imoortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
But Ignifex is not all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.
As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love h3er sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? with time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

I first saw this book at a Books-A-Million the year it came out, took a picture of it with my phone so I wouldn't forget about it, and wouldn't you know I did just that. While going through some photos, I saw it again, and decided to -finally- pick it up and start reading.

I love fairy tale retellings and I must say, I loved this one. Reading about the author, I saw that Rosamund is a huge fan of mythology, which is very prevalent in this book, especially that she creates a world that is based/loosely based at times, on Greek mythology.

One thing I absolutely loved, was that the main character of Nyx, was not sweet. She was full of spite, while readily accepting her fate, she cursed the people who did nothing to stop it. She resents her sister who is full of her father's favor, and regrets being the daughter that bore her father's face. She had character, she was angry, and she had a job to do.

Hodge's prose is very well written. Sometimes, there's more explanation given for things that didn't really matter that much in the book, such religion, because the things that are explained don't give much to the story.

I loved Ignifex's charm, and how through the characters, the reader still has a chance to decide which "monster" is the most cruel.

All in all, it was a great book and I found it hard to put down after I got past the first three chapters.