I was really surprised when I enjoyed The Cruel Prince as much as I did last year and even more surprised when I found myself waiting for the second in the series to be released. I'm more of a thriller reader and occasionally enjoy YA but less often will be drawn to fantasy YA. The characters in this are strange, I noticed several times when I thought to myself, I'm really not that keen on Jude (the protagonist) and as is the way with fantasy/YA/most books (& real life) I tended to prefer the bad guy (or one of them). This book did go down the route I expected it to, which isn't a bad thing, sometimes you don't want too many twists and turns, you just want a well written story to get lost in for a few hours!