“I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to cry. Most of all, I wanted to forget my mission and lose myself in the embrace of the one person who had ever seen my heart and claimed to love me after.”
Cruel Beauty is a stunning jewel of a novel from author Rosamund Hodge. I am a complete sucker for fairytale retellings, and this one, in the vein of Beauty and the Beast, is no exception. I found myself readily swept up in Nyx’s world, thanks to the lush, lyrical descriptions and poetic prose. The characters are nuanced, heartbreakingly real and (want to know the best part?) oh-so-flawed.
Nyx, our brave heroine, is a refreshing change of pace from the usual species of special snowflake that litter the YA genre. She is headstrong, stubborn and more than a touch wicked. It is empowering to watch her in all her glory, painfully aware of the fact that ‘no one is coming,’ and more than willing to do whatever it takes to save herself. Ignifex, our fearsome beast, is deep, charming and acerbic, yet surprisingly tender. The side characters are also entrancing and I especially enjoyed observing Alaia’s astonishing evolution.
Hodge is a master of dichotomy. She deftly weaves fierce emotion into her writing, and we as readers are here to experience the entire gambit- despair, anticipation, fright, delight, resentment, grief and joy. What a wild ride it is to feel pain and pleasure in equal measure! This is what it means to be human, and she captures our condition perfectly.
Hodge doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the psyche; it is entitled Cruel Beauty after all. Her unabashed commitment to laying bare our capacity for villainy, sin and poisonous behavior is admirable as few authors venture to go there. And yet what makes this exploration all the more powerful is her suggestion that our shadow, our latent wickedness, our imperfections are precisely what make us beautiful and whole. That we as humans are capable of redemption. That we are worthy of love, warts and all.
There are certainly echoes of A Court of Thorns and Roses here as well as Howl’s Moving Castle. And the author’s passion for mythology radiantly shines through, adding another layer of archetypal intrigue and intensity to the novel. While the pacing was sometimes inconsistent, and Nyx spent more time investigating the house than I would have preferred, Cruel Beauty was one hell of a debut novel. Wow, did that ending pack a punch! I was left utterly speechless. I’m already excitedly anticipating Hodge’s next book, Crimson Bound!
4/5 Stars
