When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution for it. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she only knows about from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not an animal, but Tamlin—one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled their world.

As she dwells on his estate, her feelings for Tamlin transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie and warning she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But an ancient, wicked shadow grows over the faerie lands, and Feyre must find a way to stop it . . . or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

Perfect for fans of Kristin Cashore and George R. R. Martin, this first book in a sexy and action-packed new series is impossible to put down!

 

 

Add it on Goodreads  (You think this is just a hyperlink. It’s not. It’s a legitimate command.)

Buy it on Amazon (Hell, I did.)

Wallow in Misery that it’s no longer on NetGalley (I did this, also.)

During and after reading A Court of Thorns and Roses, I thought to myself- extensively- “Woman, (because my inner-mind uses the nickname that my man dempt me) do you only love this book because of all of the hype? Would you love this book so much if you’d never even heard of it? The answer is a resounding yes. 

Which is fantastic, because I paid ten dollars for it. I only ever read free things! But I wanted to finish it for the #Juneandrosesreadalong hosted by Josie’s Book Corner, and I thank her SO MUCH for hosting this- otherwise I would have never gotten to it at all!

And it was worth getting to.

Magic, riddles, clever men, rules and trickery- this book has everything I love in a fairy tale, and everything I thought no one else was interested, so I’m surprised and happy about all the hype surrounding it. I love Feyre; she is everything I love in a fairytale heroine. She asks all the right questions and makes all the useless self-defense moves that highlight the gravity of her situation. I also especially loved Lucien. Had I written the book, he would have been my love interest.

The book was long, but it went along at a really fast pace for me. My goal was to read it in four days, and after the first day, seeing the percentage slowly climb up I was thinking “how am I going to find the time to finish this so quickly?” Not a problem. By the first day, I was hooked and unable to put it down.

There were four different settings in A Court of Thorns and Roses, and I saw each one just as clearly. Maas’s world building is beautiful in its thoroughness and yet completely not meticulous. I loved all of the places I visited during the story, and it was easy for me to put myself there.

One thing I did find a little weird about the book, however, was the romance between Feyre and Tamlin. Everyone- Feyre included- spends the entire book talking about how humans are the lesser of the two races. They are stupid. They are weak. They are unmagical barbarians. As a result, I started to see Tamlin as a superior sort of being and Feyre as simply some plaything of his. This is really hard for me to describe because I really do respect Feyre as a character, but I still thought of her as lesser without thinking of her as less. And then BAM! It’s like Tamlin’s doing it with a monkey.  The way these characters speak about humans, love shouldn’t even be a considerable thing. But it’s a main point in the book. I’m not saying I’d like it better without the love (a lot of it wouldn’t even make sense without it) but I’d have liked it to be played a little differently. Like, maybe with all the fae in the court starting to realize that Feyre- and therefore other humans- is not, in fact, an ape.

But other than that, I completely loved the story! I’m hoping Sarah Maas writes more like it in the future, and it’s convinced me to finally check out that Throne of Glass series I’ve been seeing everywhere.

Four Point Five Stars!

(My first decimal on this blog.)