Let me just start by saying: This series got me out of a months-long reading slump. And that’s no small thing. I started the cruel prince knowing it was going to be an enemies to lovers book, and that it was a fae-fantasy type book. Other than that, i had no expectations, and this series still exceeded them.

The cruel prince begins with a young Jude witnessing a man murder both of her parents. (Not a spoiler, it’s in the description.) The man whisks her away to a land called Faerie, where she grows up with her fae sister Vivi and her identical twin Taryn. If you hadn’t guessed by the title, the prince of Faerie- Prince Cardan- is very cruel. He and Jude hate each other, and neither attempt to hide it. As many things around her life start to change, Jude is swept into the world of royalty and politics, with nonstop plot twists and emotional rollercoasters keeping me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

This series is so well created. The land of Faerie is by far one of the most well constructed fantasy lands i’ve read about in a while. Everything about it is very thorough, and the descriptiveness makes it easy to visualize all of the settings. There was also such a wide diversity of characters, none of which really stuck out to me as stereotypical or cliche. Even the side characters are memorable, with their own goals and personalities that make the story tie together. Jude’s older sister Vivi is my prime example of a great side character. She doesn’t hide her bisexuality from the start, and she makes it clear that she thinks for herself and is very independent. Taryn, Jude’s identical twin, plays an important part in the story as well, and she’s an interesting character to me as i couldn’t ever really tell whose side she was on.

Another thing i love about this book is how all of the characters seemed so real. Obviously, as they’re all fantasy creatures, i more mean this in the way that everyone seemed to have their own conflicts, and there wasn’t really a black and white right or wrong. There rarely seemed to be a clear answer for the right thing for Jude to do, as everything seemed to have hidden conditions or consequences, and it made it harder to predict what the characters were going to do or what was going to happen.

While this series was great, i’m definitely not saying it was perfect. Jude always seemed to be fond of Madoc, despite the fact that he literally murdered her parents, which annoyed me. Vivi is seen as kind of unreasonable and emotional for hating Madoc, but i understand her and think that she’s perfectly justified and is perfectly reasonable, taking into account what he did. I also didn’t love how Cardan is so obviously cruel, how even when in a relationship with Jude, he seems to enjoy seeing her suffer. It’s partially explained in his upbringing, and he softens throughout the series, but it did bug me a little bit. My other criticism is the name of the lands in the story: Faerie and the Undersea. They’re not very creative at all and pretty self-explanatory, but i was able to look past that.

All in all, i really love this series. Yes, the characters have flaws, and Jude’s thinking isn’t always morally correct, but it’s an amazing story, well written, well constructed, and i’d die to be able to read it for the first time again. It’s so colorful and full of so many different aspects to the story and so many twists and turns. There’s betrayal, romance, espionage, illusions, trickery, and so much more. If you haven’t read this series, go read it. You won’t regret it.