This is one of those books that has been followed by a whole trail of hype, and that always leaves me a touch on the nervous side. In my experience, books that are highly hyped turn out to be either books I love, or books I absolutely despise. This one though did spark my fancy, and I had the great honour of getting to buddy read it with the lovely Ellie over at Hatterell. So be sure to head over there to check out her blog, and her review for The Cruel Prince.

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.

I adored Jude’s character growth in this novel, it is always so refreshing to see a young female character grow in strength and become independent and sure of herself. Although this is a common character arc for young adult books, normally they never get to the stage where they are more confident about what they want, than the man they think they want- this was a refreshing twist.

Having both the faerie world alongside the human world showed the distinction in culture; with the separate characters who prefer the way of life of one or the other. One downside though was that I really wanted to see more from Vivi’s relationship with Heather- a human girl. However, without saying too much, I really hope that this is taken advantage of in the following novels, as I feel that The Cruel Prince ended in an ideal scenario to explore this.

All in all, I rated this book a 4 out of 5 stars, but I feel the following books have the potential to be even better and hit the five star boundary.

Going into The Wicked King, I can not wait to see more of Jude and Prince Cardan, I want to see more friction, and complicated attraction.

Have you read The Cruel Prince? What did you think about it?