Book #42: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

I think I read a review of this book two years ago and it's been hanging out on my "to read" list on Goodreads ever since. I only left it on there because the original review was such a positive one, and I really trusted the reviewer and her taste, and because the cover looked so awesome, but the story itself sounded a little too fantasy-whacko for my general taste. It's a magical/sci-fi retelling of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty has been trained her whole life to marry and then kill the Beast, who is a demon who's in control of their whole land, and once she does that, they will be free of his reign. But of course once Nyx (the Beauty's name) does marry him, he turns out to be charming and demonic all at once, and she fights against falling in love with him as she spends her time trying to defeat him and his magical, ever-changing castle.

I was really into this book for the first 9/10ths of it. I couldn't put it down and was really sold on Nyx's character and her motivations. She was bitter and angry about her family's betrayal towards her in selling her to the Beast, and she was tough and fierce in all of the situations she got put into in the castle. I liked her personality and all of her conversations with Ignifex (the Beast's pseudo-name), and the romance between the two of them was really compelling and believable. Ignifex's character was kind of snotty and charming and even vulnerable at the right times, and Nyx was smart and tough but not over-the-top like in some YA novels. And I like all of the Greek/Roman mythological characters/references that got worked into the story--it felt so interesting. But I really got lost at the end. I just didn't understand how all of the drama got resolved and why it worked out. Spoiler alert: Nyx and Ignifex basically rewrite history so that he never becomes the demon in the first place, but then she forgets all about being married to him and has a completely different life. But somehow she remembers everything and goes and finds him and gives up her soul to be with him in torment forever, and that helps to defeat the evil ones in charge? I don't know, it just didn't make sense to me and I didn't love how she amazingly remembered everything about her past life and didn't think it was weird that she had a past life and immediately knew what she had to do to get back to her demon husband. But the rest of the book was still worth the read, even if the ending was a little too abrupt and confusing.