A Court of Thorns and Roses

What can I say--this book opens like Hunger Games with a strong, hunting-savvy female lead and then dives into full Beauty and the Beast mode with the addition of fairies and dark fairy bargains.

The story is very straightforward with minimal surprises and uses dark fairytale tropes to its advantage. The first half lags with aimless palace wandering, although gives Feyre a chance to process and settle in.

Some bits were clunky; repeating that fairies were unable to lie too often, the event in the middle of the book, and asking the hero to set snares outside her palace room like fairies wouldn't notice.

I especially enjoyed the beautiful and emotional writing during the blue fairy scene that furthers Feyre's character arc.

Then, the pacing picks up and is maintained through the end with some interesting tension-building challenges. The romantic bits are cute, well-placed and elegantly fade to black. Yet, I wish there were more sister-to-sister scenes with no-nonsense Nesta in the second half.

Best of all: It has an actual natural ending in spite of being a series. Solidly enjoyable read.

ACOTAR follows Feyre, a young woman who cares for her family until she kills a wolf (fae) and is captured by a beast who turns out to be an incredibly handsome but moody/grumpy fae named Tamlin. As she goes through her new life in the Spring Court, she begins to fall for Tamlin, while also realizing things around Spring Court are a bit off - something isn't right. Romance blossoms, problems grow, and she must figure out both what she can do to help and what she is truly feeling for Tamlin.

This was my first dip into fantasy-romance books and it ended with me diving full force into the deep end. I could not put it down, it was fantastic!

I really enjoyed the strong, stubborn, feisty FMC Feyre, she was great! I loved going along with her through her journey. Sarah J. Maas did a great job with world building and descriptions of everything, I felt like I was in the spring court and could visualize it perfectly, as if I was part of the book itself. Tension grew and I was sucked into the story, dying to know what happened next!

Reading ACOTAR opened me up to a whole world of books I never considered and I am so glad I gave it a chance.

If you like world building, fae, heated romance, strong FMC, and general fantasy, this is a must-read!

This is the first book in a while that has me screaming into my pillow. I have known about it for a while, and have heard good things, but was skeptical. I really like the beginning of Throne of Glass, but the ending got a little too complicated and the relationships convoluted, and generally unenjoyable and I didn't want to go though that again. I'm glad I did though because this book is amazing. I really like how the characters are really diverse in their motivations and back stories. There are no cookie cutter characters, and even the background characters like Alis have fully flashed out stories. The story doesn't feel rushed, and I like learning the magic system from Feyre because she has a warped understanding because she is human, so learning it through her perspective is really interesting. The romance also doesn't feel overbearing, and is definably the B plot to the whole magic debacle and the blight/Amarantha.

Lucian is my favorite character because he is just so snarky but can still hold his own in a fight despite the fact that Tamlin is the all-powerful one. I also like the relationship that Feyre and Lucian develop because it feels very playful and brother sisterly, but he really does care about her. During the rite, and when Rhysand visits, he protects her from a danger that she may or may not even recognize herself. He truly cares about her past Tamlin being his bro and him tolerating her for his sake. I also like his tragic back story because it makes him relatable as a character and he may be this snarky and standoffish character, but he has walls built up because of the trauma, which is a very human thing, despite being fae. Also the fact that he can stick it back to his family by being Tamlin's ambassador and dealing with them is such a power move. And he has a whole development arc where he genuinely starts to like her and tells her that he would protect her even if Tamlin didn't insist on it because she risked her life to save him by giving up her name to Amarantha, even though he had been an asshole to her in the past. One of my favorite scenes in the whole book is when Lucian blows up at Feyre for making the deal with Rhysand to heal her because he would have healed her as soon as he was able to move after Amarantha made Tamlin punish him for helping Feyre in the first trial. They have a really good sibling relationship, and I'm excited to see that develop as the series goes on, especially since Lucian's bio family is full of assholes that tried to kill him, and Feyre made sure to give them some murderous stairs.

I originally wasn't a fan of Rhysand as a character because he was on the side of villainy for no apparent reason, which I suppose was the point because he is the high lord of the night court and is supposed to be all mysterious, so he did a good job of that. But as the book went on and he started to develop more of a relationship with Feyre, and told her about how Amarantha was actually punishing him for his father killing Tamlin's father and brother, who she liked because they also hated humans, I started to like him more. I think his fascination with Feyre, and his rivalry with Tamlin is super fun, and an interesting dynamic that puts Reece in a weird gray area between good and bad, which I think suits him perfectly. He definitely fits the type of tall dark and handsome, and I haven't really looked into the fandom for this series, but I have a feeling the Reece and Feyre is a popular ship, as opposed to Tamlin and Feyre which is the canon main ship going on right now. I would not be opposed to a love triangle, but I like that Tamlin and Reece's rivalry seems entirely separate from Feyre, and Reece is just kind of using her to get to Tamlin, but Feyre seems to understand this, and no real feelings seem to be developing, which is always good.

I really like Tamlin as a character, but on the whole, I was underwhelmed by him in particular. I thought he had a really interesting character, but since he had to keep a secret during the first half, and in the second half under the mountain he had to remain distant for Feyre's sake, I feel like he didn't get as much characterization as many of the other characters, making him a little underwhelming as opposed to Reece or Lucian or even Amarantha.