cruel beauty by rosamund hodge
n.b. it's actually march 2026. hello from the future! since my last post in november, I've read eight books and finished reviewing none of them. while part of me wants to leave things as they are, the completionist in me is like, "eight posts though...?" also there's a book I'd like to read on netgalley and I feel like an active blog with consistent posting is better than an inactive blog with EIGHT MISSING POSTS. so I'm going on a little backfill extravaganza! don't mind me~
yet another beauty & the beast retelling, and I loved ? ?? this??? ? it's got a relatively low rating on goodreads, but I inhaled cruel beauty by rosamund hodge.
this was a story with rich, messy family dynamics and kind of a dark and sinister romance I so deeply enjoyed reading, although if you ask me today about specific plot points, I'm not sure I could name one. I feel like there was an ocean inside a great hall with stars...? or was that a fic I read on ao3...
cruel beauty has been on my TBR since july 2015. it took me a literal decade to pick up this book. I'm so happy I read it. it felt like beauty & the beast (more robin mckinley-style than disney) meets holly black's folk of the air series, except it came out a few years before cruel prince and I liked it way better.
(actually it's really more of a mash-up between beauty & the beast and greek mythology... rosamund hodge referenced c.s. lewis' till we have faces as a source of inspiration in her author's note, and I can definitely see it. the sister dynamic between nyx and astraia is so like the relationship between psyche and orual – loving and competitive, spiteful and yearning and bitter.)
I try to steal from all the best authors, but Cruel Beauty owes a special debt of inspiration to C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot. It was Lewis’s Till We Have Faces that helped me realize what I wanted out of heroines and stories retold.
I definitely feel that this emphasis on complex family dynamics was what made the book so rich. the original source material becomes little more than scaffolding – the story takes on its own life and becomes so much bigger.
as with all YA novels, nyx is your classic avoidant girl – she's been raised as the family sacrificial lamb, betrothed to the trickster ruler ignifex and trained to kill him from birth. nyx feels doomed to her destiny and so she eschews love and affection because she doesn't think it matters for her, anyway. she reminds me of jude from the folk of the air books, although I found nyx to be much more sympathetic.
It was like ants crawling under my skin, like flies buzzing in my ears, like an icy current trying to drag me away. I listed off the similes in my mind, because sometimes if I analyzed the feeling enough, it would go away.
and ignifex is very cardan, in that his bargains are cruel and his jokes are cutting, but still – you just know there's a tenderness that is buried beneath.
"He's a coward and a fool," he repeated distantly, as if he had learnt the words by rote. Then his gaze snapped back to me. "Why shouldn't I know my own shadow?"
the thing I like most about nyx and ignifex is how they're written – just wonderful character studies. they're allowed to be multifaceted and have their ignoble motivations, and because they're drawn with such depth, it's much easier to understand and justify why they are the way they are, and to root for them, too. there's something unequivocal about how the author writes nyx and ignifex – neither one of them is meant to be "good," but we willfully love and accept them as they are anyway.
(this, by the way, is right up my alley. I love rooting for a villain – and not because it's fun to root for the bad guy or anything, but because villains can have sympathetic origin stories that, once you're made aware of them, can completely shift the paradigm of understanding. and it's such a delight to have that experience, realizing that neither one of these characters is 100% good, but we can still want good things for them.)
the storyline is compelling, and I can only say that because I was apparently so captivated by it that I didn't bother to highlight a ton of quotes or jot down my thoughts while reading – I just wanted to get to the next page, and the page after that. it's not super plot-dense... but there's mystery and intrigue and mythology and lots of romance and, if I remember correctly, lots of kissing.
I won't say more on the plot because ha ha honestly I can't remember specifics. but also to make more references to the plot would be to share spoilers! and I think it's best to go into this YA novel with just the synopsis and genre in mind. enjoy the vibes.