"Cruel Beauty"

Rosamund Hodge loves mythology, Hello Kitty, and T. S. Eliot. Her debut novel, Cruel Beauty—a YA fantasy where Greek mythology meets Beauty and the Beast—features references to only two of those things.

Hodge applied the Page 69 Test to Cruel Beauty and reported the following:

I was happily surprised to find that page 69 of my novel does, in fact, provide a good preview of the novel. My heroine, Nyx Triskelion, has known all her life that her father's foolish bargain doomed her to marry the Gentle Lord, the evil, immortal ruler of her country. And all her life, she has trained to die destroying him. Yet when she arrives at his castle, she finds that her new husband is not only more attractive than she expected; he is also not quite so cruel to her. On page 69, she is having her first dinner with him.

“Or will you next expect me to love you because you have not yet put me to torment?”

As I said the words, I realized they were true. I had been the bride of the Gentle Lord for half a day already, and there had been strikingly little torment. And I was not grateful; I was disturbed. What could he be planning?

“Well, I’m already hoping there could be a dinner where you don’t try to stab me with your fork,” he said.

“You might need to make your peace with disappointment.”

Learn more about the book and author at Rosamund Hodge's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue