BookTok is the word used to describe a subcommunity of the popular social media app, TikTok, that focuses on literature. The community has over 300 billion views, driving bestseller lists with its power (particularly in the young adult, fantasy, and romance genres).
Authors and passionate readers discuss, criticize, and recommend books on BookTok. These recommendations have given birth to the “BookTok made me buy it” trend and the idea of “BookTok” books, books that have gone viral on TikTok and often fall into similar genres and tropes.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, the first in The Folk of the Air series, is one such “BookTok” book. It was recommended as a enemies-to-lovers romantasy (a term combining the romance and fantasy genre created on TikTok) and received mass popularity. This fact made me personally weary to pick up the book. BookTok is well known for its popular and well-written books, but it is also known for popularizing books that fall so far into tropes that they are formulaic or have a high “spicyness” rating (basically just smut books). As such, I tend to avoid BookTok books and would probably have missed out on The Cruel Prince if not for my friend, Evy N. She described The Cruel Prince as “a rollercoaster of political fantasy with an undercut of romance”, which convinced me to pick it up.
The Cruel Prince beat all of my expectations. It follows the story of Jude Durante, a mortal girl, as she fights for her place in the magical, and often cruel, world of Faerie. When she and her twin sister, Taryn, were seven years old, their mother and father were killed in front of them by her mother’s ex-husband and father to their older half sister, Vivienne. His name was Madoc, a powerful general in the High Court of Faerie, and he spirited the girls away from the modern mortal lands to the mystical fae world. Flashforward ten years later and the girls have adapted to Faerie. Jude and Taryn have been raised among the fae and take classes with the rest of the faerie gentry, a rare honor as humans are seen mostly as drugged servants bound to fae’s whims as exhaustion consumes them. Both seek to earn a place among the Court, with Jude wanting to become a knight and Taryn seeking to marry. As Jude fights for her own power, she gets involved with bloodshed, trickery, and intrigue surrounding the royal crown.
The book does start off rather slowly after the big bang of Jude’s parents being murdered in the prologue. Part One is more about Jude school issues, which involve violence, as all fae things do, and her budding want for power. I do like the way that Cardan, the titular cruel prince, and his friends are presented as actual enemies and the tension-filled rivalry he and Jude have going on. The worldbuilding and political maneuvering kept me wanting more. I cannot wait to read more about the world and what Jude plans to do, especially after the ending of the book, which was a massive pay off.
BookTok is powerful for writers, marketers, and readers alike. It has given a platform for books that may have overwise been ignored. After my own experience, I find myself more appreciative of BookTok and what it has to offer.
