Book Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (ACOTAR #1)

Genre- New Adult, Fantasy, Romance

Hardcover Edition-416 Pages

5/5 Lily Pads

Would I Recommend It? Yes!

Some Spoilers!

Hey guys I'm back with a review. Today I am reviewing "A Court of Thorns and Roses". First of all I want you to know that I wasn't the biggest fan of her "Throne of Glass" series. I loved the first book, the second one was fine and I hated Heir of Fire. I decided to stop reading that series. However, I really wanted to give this book a try because I love Fairy-Tale Retellings and I love Fae books. This one sounded amazing and I heard so many amazing things about it, so I decided to pick it up. I'm so glad I did because I loved this book! Let's get on with the review.

The Plot(Goodreads Summary)

    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.

My Opinion

I really enjoyed this book you guys! I'll admit that I was a little scared going into this book because of the hype. This book didn't disappoint me at all, it was awesome. 

First I'm going to talk about the writing. Even though I didn't love her other series, I loved her writing style. It's hard to explain, but I just really like it. It's simple and can be descriptive at times. In ACOTAR, I really liked the writing. The writing is slower than I'm used to, so it took me a while to read this book. I wanted to read the book really slowly to enjoy it. Overall, I really like her writing style. She has her own unique style. I loved that this book was in first person.

 I really loved the plot for this book. If your wondering, this book is a retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" and "East of the Sun, West of the Moon". I love retellings so that intrigued me to read it. I also love the world and I love books with Fae in it. I just love my Fairy books. I loved the setting of this book. I loved that most of the book took place in a castle. I loved reading about Feyre living there with Tamlin and Lucien. I just love castles which is why I'm a huge Fantasy lover, it's my favorite setting to read about. 

 

The pacing of this book was pretty good. I'll admit, it was slow but not in a bad way. I don't mind reading slow paced books. I don't need a lot of action to be happy so the pacing didn't bother me. I liked that it was slow, because she took a long time developing the characters and I loved that. I tend to gravitate towards books that mostly focus on the characters. Speaking of characters, that's what I'm going to talk about next.  

Now, let's talk about the characters. Characters are the most important part of a book to me. I really liked most of the characters in this book. 

First let's talk about the main protagonist, Feyre. I really liked Feyre. She was such a great character. She's very kind and I like that she's tough too. In the beginning of the book Feyre lives with her father and two older sisters, Elain and Nesta. Even though she is the youngest, she has to go out and hunt to provide food for her family. Let me just say I am totally against that. I couldn't stand that the youngest kid had to go out and provide the food, it's not right! I hated her sisters because they were spoiled brats and they didn't do anything! All they did was complain about how they wanted nicer and better clothes, and Feyre's clothes were worse and falling apart. How can you live like that? As someone who helps out a lot in my family, how can you just sit around and not help out with anything? I would never make the youngest child go out and do all the work. Ugh, that irritated me so much! That's why I hated her sisters. I seriously thought that Feyre was the oldest because of what she does for her family. I can't believe her Dad didn't help out either! Yes, he was injured but still, he could have  done something. Why did Feyre have to do all the work? If I were her, I would wanna leave her family. Anyway, I felt a lot of sympathy for her. So basically after that, she goes out in the woods and sees a wolf and eventually kills it. She doesn't know who the wolf was. After she gets back to her family, a beast breaks into her house. He tells Feyre she has the choice to die or come live with him. Obviously she chooses to live with him, and so she lives with him for the rest of the book. 

So Tamlin is the beast that Feyre lives with. I really liked Tamlin. He wasn't very creepy and he was actually pretty nice. He doesn't really act like a beast should. I liked how he really tried to make an effort to get to know Feyre. At first she doesn't want anything to do with him, but after a while, she begins to open up to him and they form a relationship. At the end of the book you find out why Tamlin acted the way he did. I still liked him at the end. Right now I am Team Tamlin but that might change when I read the second book. 

Speaking of them, another thing I want to talk about is the romance. Since this is a fairy-tale retelling, I was expecting for the romance to be insta-love, but it wasn't. It was actually a slow burn romance which I loved. You guys know I hate insta-love, who doesn't? I just really liked the romance. Feyre went from not liking Tamlin to loving him by the end of the book. 

Another character I want to mention is Lucien. He didn't have much character development so I didn't love him at first. He wasn't in the book enough for me to love him. I did like him though. Hopefully I'll get to know him better in the next book. I don't have too much to say about Lucien. He was a good character. I sort of liked her maid, Alis. She was kind of rude but she did have a nice side. I liked her but not as much as maids in other books like "The Selection" series. 

The last character I wanna talk about is Rhysand. I don't know what to think of him honestly. He wasn't in the book much, so I don't know how I feel about him. I'll admit I'm sort of drawn to him because he's a little mysterious. I don't know if he's good or bad. I guess I like him but I don't love him. I can't wait to see more of Rhys in the second book. I'm sure his character development will be a lot better. He's sort of creepy and weird but I think he has good intentions. So yeah, hopefully I'll like him better in the second book. 

My favorite part of the book was definitely the end. At the end Feyre has to do Three Trials to break a curse and I loved reading that part. It reminded me of "Goblet of Fire" for some reason. I just loved it. I didn't know the riddle at all.

I think this book would've been a great stand-alone. It ended really well, but I'm glad there's two more books. 

Overall, I really loved this book. I can't wait to see what happens in "A Court of Mist and Fury". Hopefully I like that book because I've heard it's way better than the first one. If you love fantasy books and fairy-tale retellings I really recommend this book. This book is definitely worth a buy, even though I got this book for free with a gift card. I definitely would've paid full price for this book though, it's worth it. Anyway, thanks so much for reading this long review. I'll have a review up for the second book in the future so stay tuned for that. Have a great day and happy reading! Bye :)