Book Review: How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories by Holly Black

Its time to review one of my most anticipated reads of the year guys!! I am in the camp that loves everything about Jude and Cardan, they are so thoroughly an enemies to lovers relationship and that is my absolute favourite. It’s not even like ‘I thought he was a bad guy but actually he wasn’t’, it’s legitimately Cardan is horrible but then he changes as the books progress.

I’m really not sure how to summarise this book. It’s a collection of short stories told from Cardan’s perspective. There is a larger plot but that doesn’t really get revealed until the last story, so I don’t want to tell you about it here. It covers some of the events before The Cruel Prince and then some after The Queen of Nothing.

The first thing I’ll say about this book is that it was a beautiful read. Each page is gorgeously illustrated, and I can’t wait to thoroughly savour it on my reread. I thought the artist had Cardan spot on, he looked perfect and I got the magic of Faerie.

Second thing, this is a very quick read. I think I managed it in about two hours, maybe less. Its already short and the illustrations take up a lot of the page. I personally really enjoy a quick read and I didn’t feel this needed to be longer, though let’s face it I would have inhaled it just as thoroughly even if it were a thousand pages long.

The only complaint I have about this book is that I wanted more mushy Jude and Cardan scenes! I wanted to see their life after Queen of Nothing as they break down the walls between each other and let each other in. Essentially, I wanted A Court of Frost and Starlight but for The Folk of the Air. We do get a couple of peaks and those that we saw I loved. I feel like I should petition Holly Black for a book of Jude and Cardan trash.

Talking about this book on Instagram has made me decide to reread the whole series and I’m doing that on Audio this time (again through BorrowBox – seriously check it out guys!). I’m fully intending on rereading this afterwards because as I say I loved it.

It’s difficult to say what I’d rate this. I think storywise probably a 4.5* but as a whole reading experience it’s definitely a 5*!