Creepy Reads Review: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

This months Creepy Reads Review is of a novel a friend gave to me. I had visited her at Tampere and on my way back home I needed something new to read on the train. My friend had a pile of books she wanted to give away. So, these book were not her favourites but I still decided to read one of them. I admit it was because of the pretty cover and the promise that it has intertextual references to may fairy tales. The novel I chose was Rosamund Hodge's Cruel Beauty.

My copy's cover is already a bit worn.

A mash-up of genres

As promised, the novel draws inspiration from several myths and fairy tales, the most obvious ones are the Blue Beard and the Beauty & the Beast. These two have a straight impact on the plot. On the thematic level the novel is more close to the ancient Greek myths (mostly tragedies) which clash amusingly with the 'happily ever after' mentality of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. There are also strong references to the story of Rumplestiltskin and a more recent fantasy story the Labyrinth, a film starring David Bowie.

Greek tragedies and fairy tales not being enough, Cruel Beauty is also a chic-lit romance story and at some points it almost seems like one of the Harlequin novels. I do not often read romance stories but Cruel Beauty combines successfully some sense of humor and wicked dialogues to the romance, so I found it mostly entertaining.

However, there was a bit too much repetition with these romantic scenes. Some times there seemed to be no point, why some elements and lines and deeds were repeated in several scenes. One could always argue that repetition is an important motif from the fairy tales. I thought that sometimes the repetition stated to resemble the way a soap opera has constantly repeating romantic situations and how the soap opera characters dwell in their feelings.

A tiny bit about the story

Since I do try to avoid spoiling the possible future reading experience of  the books I introduce in the Creepy Reads Reviews, I am not going to speak about the plot twists of Cruel Beauty. But I do wish to present some of my impressions and thoughts about the story.

The starting situation of the novel is the following: The narrator and the main character is a 17-year-old girl named Nyx. She lives in a world ruled by a demon lord. Nyx is to be marry that demon because of a plot made by her father. Nyx is trained to be an assassin and her destiny is to free the world of its evil demon ruler. Of course, not everything goes according to Nyx's father's plan nor are all characters what they first seem.

I very much enjoyed that the narrating main character Nyx is not a nice person. She is not the usual pure hearted heroine. Instead her childhood has molded her into a vengeful and disappointed creature with a heart filled with grudge towards her own family ('the good ones') and a sharp tongue. And who can blame her? She is treated coldly by her father and trained to be a vessel of revenge, a knife others want to use. The hidden anger inside Nyx makes her a much more interesting character than what teenage heroes or heroines usually are.

Conclusion 

All in all, I thought this was a nice reading experience and I especially liked the way the world of this fantasy novel was constructed. The characters had a religion mostly inspired by the Ancient Greek and Roman traditions and it is evident Hodge knows a lot about ancient Greece and its myths. The story-world of Cruel Beauty was estranged but welcoming for the reader, and I probably will read more Hodge's novels in the future.

I can recommend this novel, if you occasionally enjoy a good chic-lit, like to read fantasy and like to read descriptions of magical castles and their beautiful rooms.