“And I realized—I realized how badly I'd been treated before, if my standards had become so low. If the freedom I'd been granted felt like a privilege and not an inherent right.”
I don't even know how to blurb this plot without spoiling things that happened in the first book. So Instead, I present to you a very confusing, yet completely spoiler free blurb... Here goes:
Feyre is still grappling with the trauma of what happened to her in the previous book. She is planning a wedding to the love she fought for and is feeling the pressures of being the girl who did that thing for her lover's court and kingdom. She is also dealing with the consequences of a bargain she agreed to when she was under duress. Her world has been flipped on its head because of things that happened, but also because she is not the same person she was before the terrible things happened.... Things are bad. She is not doing good, her love interest is not fine and the wedding dress the High Priestess picked out for her is hideous and she hates it.
So I gave A Court of Thorns and Roses 2 stars... If you read my review you know that I barely even finished reading it and I hated almost every moment of it. However, every Single thing I hated about the first book completely left my mind because this book was a MASTERPIECE. There is so little I would change about it. The fantasy realm Maas has created turned out to be a little more original than everything she showed readers in the first book. I finished this almost 700 page book in a matter of days because I couldn't carry on with my life until I found out what happened.
One of my greatest struggles when reading any fantasy-fic are the female characters. These ghastly, fantasy-females walk around as little more than overly cliched two dimensional characters who, are either killed to set the main character (read as MALE character) on his heroes journey, OR they are sex objects, OR they are insufferable bitches (tell me I'm wrong.) After the first book I was worried because Feyre was headed in all of those directions FAST. After the ending of the last book and the surprise 25% mark of this book, I realized that FINALLY we have a woman who contends for her own empowerment and healing. There are two love interests in this book (UGH! I KNOW, BUT STAY WITH ME). I was waiting for the love triangle shoe to drop. I am so sick of this trope, so I vowed that if it veered into this territory I was out. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not the case at all (PRAISE BE). The love interest that Feyre ends up picking empowers her to heal, he believes in her strength and power and he allows her to walk in it freely. This is earth shatteringly-unusual for this genre and man, was it refreshing. I think this is one of the few books that wove a heavy romance element into its plot without too many eye-rolls from me. I did say "oh my gosh, EW!!" a couple times, but overall my complaints on this aspect of the story were minimal.
My only critique of this book is Maas' complete inability to show readers instead of telling them--which I know is such a creative writing 101 thing to say, but the basic formula of this book is: confusing thing + other confusing thing+a mysterious thing = 10 paragraphs of explanation vomit. This happened several times in the first book and it happened even more in the second book. I guess it did the job as far as connecting all the confusion and mystery, but it was a distraction and it pulled me out of the grips of the story more than once. It was often waaay too much information for me to process at one time, in one chapter. (spoiler alert this continues in the third book 🙃)
I honestly came into this book hoping for greatness but expecting more of what I hated about the first novel. I was so pleasantly surprised. This novel reminded me of what it feels like to be completely lost in a different world. I remember reading the Twilight books in high school and feeling similarly lost in that world. This was an astonishing surprise that has taught me that sometimes taking a risk on something completely outside of my genre comfort zone is worth considering more often.
5/5 stars (I KNOW I AM JUST AS SHOCKED AS YOU!!!!)
Content warning: domestic abuse, sexual assault, mentions of rape, lots and lots of gore and violence, torture, PTSD, kidnapping, a horrible wedding dress.
Steam Content: The steam level of this book has been dialed up significantly. Everything is on page and leaves very little to the imagination. A friend of mine wanting to read this series how often/how much and I'd say a good 20% of the book is designated to steam. So if you are a Closed-door romance fan, this might not be the book for you. I have heard it only escalates from here every book so, worth considering!
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