“Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.”
Dear ACOTAR Fans,
you are intense and passionate about this series and I feel I owe you an apology. I am about to drag this book through the mud soooooooooo hard... Come for me if you must.
Do you want to know what A Court of Thrones and Roses is about? well, let me enlighten you. Imagine all the books in the YA fantasy fiction realm... okay, now imagine that the best and worst parts of all of those books fuse together to make a really big unoriginal novel. Still with me? Now imagine this ripped-off, barely re-imagined book also happens to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling *face palm*. I wish this was an elaborate joke but it is in fact a book that got published. I swear the first chapter of this book was basically the exact same first chapter as the Hunger Games but with minor changes so Maas wouldn't be taken to the legal-kind-of- COURT to be sued...
Feyre lives at the edge of the forest in a small cabin with her insufferable, ungrateful, sisters and her lazy father. The only reason their family has managed to survive is because Feyre has taken it upon herself to hunt for their family and sell the hides of the hunted animals for a small amount of coin. Katniss... Oops, sorry, I mean, Feyre kills a doe in the forest--a big win for her and her family-- just as she is about to retrieve the hunted doe, she spots a very large wolf. Now here, in The Human World, faeries often disguise themselves as wolves and prowl around for... REASONS? But Feyre decides to shoot it dead anyway. Turns out it was a faerie and now a very angry faerie friend, to that no dead, wolf-faerie (are you still with me?) comes and tells Feyre in front of her whole Poor, Wretched, Family that the punishment for killing a faerie disguised as a wolf is death... BUT DON'T WORRY! INSTEAD OF DEATH, ACTUALLY, YOU CAN JUST COME LIVE WITH ME IN MY FAERIE MANSION IN MY FAERIE KINGDOM BECAUSE... ???????? *face palm* Wait, wuuut? That was convenient and suspicious??? No one thought this was convenient and suspicious OKAYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
So here is the deal guys, I was determined to read this because EVERYONE has read this series and has loved it. Which, good for them--I am not judging anyone who loved this book! love away-- The newest installment of this book hit shelves a couple weeks ago and by the end of the release date, I had full fledged FOMO (fear of missing out). I needed to know if this series was worth the hype immediately.
I am sure by now you have noticed I am not much of a fantasy reader. I feel like often, what people describe when they describe loving the fantasy genre, is the escape factor. Something about getting pulled into a world with magic and High Lords and Beasts brings a lot of readers a deeper form of escape than, say, contemporary literature would. I have not found this to be true for me. I usually find fantasy books to be 200 pages too long and chocked full of too many characters, magic systems, and complicated plot-lines. If there is a map at the beginning of the book I basically panic and refuse to read it (If you know me personally, please ask my husband how many times we had to pause Game of Thrones so that he could fill me in on "who the hell is this character again?" and "Wait, whose brother is that?")
I had the full gambit of feels while reading this book. It took me a long time, but I did eventually find myself invested enough to look past the recycled material and predictable plot... AND THEN, I got to the 70% mark where everything fell apart and I completely did not care about a single character's plight. I posted on my bookstagram stories "IDGAF about a single person in this book. I could set this book down right now and not lose a night of sleep over not knowing the ending." The amount of messages I got from people begging me not to stop because "ThE bEsT iS yEt tO CoMe" had me rolling my eyes but I was intrigued enough to push through.
It pains me to say this in any context or capacity, BUT, everyone was absolutely right. The last 30% of this novel was fantastic. It was unique and original, it was delightfully dark and I finally, FINALLY, started to like Feyre. When the book concluded I knew I would have to read the next one. I am weary because it seems to me that the author is following suit of EVERY YA BOOK OUT THERE by offering up a plot detail that had me groaning "please, god, not another sequel featuring a love triangle soap opera!" We shall see I guess!
As a whole, I think it is completely unacceptable for a book in any genre to coast through the majority of its pages using genre cliches and barely disguised plot details from other books within the same genre. Its lazy and boring. I do not think the ends of this book justify the trash-can fire of the first 70% but my feeling as a begrudging finisher of this novel shifted with that ending. I figured, as I'm sure most did, that if Maas had an ending like that in her... maybe, just maybe, her next book will be better and more original. Fingers crossed. I'll keep you posted.
2 /5 Stars (the ONLY reason this didn't receive one star is because the ending came through)
Content warning: kidnapping, a good amount of gore and violence happens on page (guts entrails and all), torture, mentions of rape/implied rape, sexual assault, Twilight rip offs, hunger game rip offs, very poorly written chapters... etc.
A note on steam Content: There is a term Romance Readers use that I have only been acquainted with recently. The term is used to describe the level of on page sexual content present in a book. The term is "Open Door Romance" an Open Door Romance means that all sexual content happen fully on page. A Closed Door Romance means sex scenes are heavily implied and happen off page. While there is really only a couple scenes present in this novel, they would be categorized as Open Door. I include this because a lot of people have strong preferences on which category they feel comfortable with. If I had to rate the scenes in this novel under a movie rating it would for sure fall under PG-13.
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