Cruel Beauty
by Rosamund Hodge
read by Elizabeth Knowelden
HarperAudio, 2014. 10 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written April 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
This is a Beauty and the Beast tale with complicated and beautiful world-building. I chose this audiobook because none of my audio holds were available and I wanted something to listen to while cleaning house. So I searched for books read by my favorite narrator, Elizabeth Knowelden. She makes any book a magical experience. As soon as I checked the book out, several of my holds were available all at once, but I was already hooked and finished this book before I was willing to look at any of them.
All her life, Nyx has known that when she comes of age, she will marry the Gentle Lord — and she must destroy him. She has been trained in just enough of the magical arts to make the Gentle Lord’s magical castle collapse in on him to free Arcadia forever. The catch is that she would be trapped as well. The Gentle Lord supposedly keeps the demons in Arcadia in check, but not always successfully. Since the time of the Sundering, Arcadia has been separate from the rest of the world with the Gentle Lord ruling over them. He makes bargains with people — bargains that pretty much always turn out badly for those who agree to them. Before her birth, Nyx’s father made a bargain for children, with the price that one of his twin daughters would have to marry the Gentle Lord on her 17th birthday. But he forgot to include that his wife would have the strength to bear children, and Nyx’s mother died in childbirth.
All her life, Nyx’s family has been preparing her for this task, but unsurprisingly, she’s not happy about it. She’s expected to avenge her mother and bring about the deliverance of Arcadia, but at the cost of her own life. When she gets to the Gentle Lord’s castle, nothing is as she had thought. She works on the plan to find the hearts of water, fire, earth, and air to negate them and bring down the castle, but as she follows this quest, she learns that’s not going to free Arcadia after all.
And it turns out there are two beasts in the castle. There’s the Gentle Lord, known as Ignafex, and his shadow-servant, Shade — who is only in human form at night. They share the same face, but Ignafex has eyes of a demon. Nyx needs to find out who they are and how they got there, or she’ll never be able to defeat the Gentle Lord — and there are questions and secrets and layers to everything.
I’m not sure if I would have enjoyed this book as much if I had read it myself, but as always, Elizabeth Knowelden cast a spell and enthralled me with this complex and dangerous world.
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/cruel_beauty.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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