5. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Cruel Beauty Universe #1
listened to in the car  to work and to Phoenix for PLC Conference
2014 Balzer & Bray
352 pgs.
YA Fantasy
Finished 2/6/16
Goodreads rating: 3.77
My rating: 1/Did not like it
Setting: Arcardia in the past/future/who knows

First line/s:   "I was raised to marry a monster."

My comments:  I so want to give this at least a 2, "it was okay," but I really didn't like it at all, so I must be honest.  I wanted to give up reading constantly, but was curious to see how Hodge would finally end the story.  Part of my problem was, I think, the reader.  She sounded so much older than a 17-year old protagonist.  And for Nix to fall so quickly for both Shade and Ignifex (I didn't read it, I listened, so don't know any of the spellings) --- why?  All the magical "hearts" she'd learned about as a child - nothing was given enough attention except for her endless dreams, sights, and movements around the mansion/castle.  I may have had an entirely different reaction if I'd read this, but I didn't....

Goodreads synopsis: Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.
          Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.
          Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.
          With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.
          But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle—a shifting maze of magical rooms—enthralls her.
          As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.