The Cruel Prince

[alaterdate]

So, I did end up reading The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. And I just gotta ask: who was this book for? I know genres like "Young Adult" are pretty much fake and for marketing, but I don't think putting middle grade writing and a smattering of violence & making out and calling it YA should be a thing. The whiplash from contemporary banality to attempted murder and back was also jarring (kind of like the jumps in These Witches Don't Burn. Is this a thing?!)

This book has the kind of writing that reminds me how much I hate first person. I let it go at first because "hey, it's young adult", but it often read like a bad movie's voice over narration.

I would have quit and maybe not have even finished the book, if I weren't giving it free passes for genre & my desire to see why it was compared to The Winter Prince in that one tweet. There's like a 7% overlap and I'm being generous.

I did not start to enjoy this book even a smidge until 273 pages in of 374. And then, there were only exactly 43 glorious pages until I went back to not caring. This tiny, tiny, chunk of pages finally had interesting conflict and stakes. They pretty much came out of nowhere, but they were of a nature that I enjoy. So I lived deliciously for 5 minutes. These points were over almost as soon as they began and do not really ever come back enough to have mattered.....

Everything else was predictable and juvenile. School bullies, trips to the mall, oh watch out this guy is tryna murder youu~, school again. Ok. Also bullying someone to near murder, because you like like them. Jfc. Also the dude practically liked her for no reason. WHAT WAS THE REASON????? (Hilariously there is a part where she finds a piece of paper on which he wrote her name a bunch of times like a 12 year old.)
There was no character progression either, unless you count some shocking complete change of character for the love interest in the second half. Was that even the same dude? What the hell, man?? It was like the author forgot these characters were supposed to make out and then said "whoop, better make the dude likeable for some reason, let's change his entire personality that'll redeem this." Enemies to new personality who dis?
The main character, Jude, kept repeating the same things over and over again instead of the reader actually seeing it in the text. If you say it enough times it starts to sound true, yes, but this is a book, where is the story? Show me what is true. The characters were so inconsistent, changing on a dime just to advance the "plot". Not to mention, this girl did hardly anything yet somehow managed to gain the trust of influential/proactive people. Hmm, wack. She also never faces a real character making decision, one that would steer her to the ending. A missed opportunity for her to actually have consequences that would spawn her thoughts that she might be on the wrong path. A lot of the twists felt forced too, but who cares about the plot. Bleghhhhhhhh. Also, near complete lack of world building. A map at the front of your book does not make a world.

This book was not about fairies. This book was about people the author called "fairies."

No one needs to know that my hopes were dashed. No one needs to know I ever had any hope at all.

Comments

[pseudo_tsuga]

Enemies to new personality who dis?
lmaoooooooooooo



the last quoted bit is so perfect and cutting


(this is kentsarrow from tumblr btw, I'm trying to actually dw, uh, six months later)

[alaterdate]

Hello! O/ Good to see you here!

I'm glad you enjoyed one of my signature erratic book reviews lol. That is the only line I highlighted in the entire book, it was so fitting. I wanted to like it because I liked the book it was compared to, but yeesh 😬