There is a strange love triangle that I was not a fan of, especially considering there was a weird love triangle in Cruel Beauty as well. I also was not a fan of the romance in the book. However, the pacing of it and some of the confusion that I felt made for a subpar reading experience. There were some twists and turns in the book that I appreciated and I also thought that the novel had a much clearer story/plot progression than Cruel Beauty did.

I couldn’t really get into the book until well past the halfway mark and even then, I was a bit apathetic about everything. Much like Cruel Beauty, there wasn’t a lot that happened in the book and I felt that it dragged on and on. I couldn’t connect with what was happening and found the plot to be too slow in pacing. As intriguing and intense as the synopsis sounds, I found the novel to be only a fraction as exciting as what was advertised.

However, I was not really a fan of the plot or the story. As far as taking someone else’s story and making it her own goes, Hodge gets top marks for her efforts. The Little Red Riding Hood elements are present in the novel but Rosamund Hodge takes it to a new level and makes the story original and her own. I have to say that I felt similarly about Crimson Bound, though I did think that it was significantly better executed than Cruel Beauty.Ĭrimson Bound is a very loose Little Red Riding Hood retelling. If you read my Cruel Beautyreview, you’ll know that I wasn’t very impressed with Rosamund Hodge’s debut novel. Within a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night? MY THOUGHTS And as they become unexpected allies, they discover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. Together, they navigate the opulent world of the courtly elite, where beauty and power reign and no one can be trusted. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand-the man she hates most-Rachelle forces Armand to help her hunt for the legendary sword that might save their world. Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in a vain effort to atone. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat. But she was also reckless-straying from the forest path in pursuit of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. When Rachelle was fifteen she was good-apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village.

Crimson bound