Book Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I don’t particularly like yielding wholly to my baser side.”

─ Sarah J. Maas

 

“If I told you those things, there’d be no fun in it, would there?”

─ Sarah J. Maas

 

“Magic’s a specific kind of thing ─ it likes rules, and she manipulated them too well.”

─ Sarah J. Maas

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Book Information

Title: A Court of Thorns and Roses (Court of Thorns and Roses Book #1)

Author: Sarah J. Maas

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN 9781635575569

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Folk Tales, Fables, Fairy Tales

Ages: 18 +

448 pages

 

Book Summary:

Nineteen-year-old Feyre goes hunting in the woods to feed her starving family. While hunting, she kills a wolf. Shortly after, a terrifying creature arrives demanding retribution. Feyre agrees to go with the creature, while secretly plotting an escape. The beast takes Feyre into a dangerous magical land she only knows about from legends. Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, at least not all the time, but one of the immortal faeries who once ruled her world.

As she adapts to what is now her new home, she discovers that her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, are changing. But something is not right in the faerie lands, but none of the powerful immortal faeries will give her a straight answer. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, they must find a way to stop it, or doom the faeries and the world-forever.

Book Rating   3.5/5

A Court of Thorns and Roses is the story about a girl who is discovering what it is to feel joy and love. In a world that is divided into the lands of the humans and the land of the faeries, Feyre finds she isn’t bound to a life of misery. Feyre grew up in a small village near the wall that separated the human lands from Prythian. People have long memories of the human-faerie war centuries earlier, and a deeply embedded hatred and fear of faerie kind.

Feyre like other children learned the tales and warnings of the stories of the faeries. Yet these stories like many other things Feyre grew up learning and knowing as the truth in village were one-sided. Feyre has spent time among the faeries and learned they are not so different. The faeries tell stories of their own of how terrible humans are.

After being captured, Feyre is taken to a large estate, cared for and given free reign. Feyre slowly learns how to feel joy, unencumbered by the miserable burden of caring for her family.

Feyre starts to care for her beastly captor and his people. She tries to unravel the hidden secret of the blight slowly  destroying the land, seeking out those who may know the truth. The duo struggle to fight the blight and curse before it is to late, and both the faeries and humans are destroyed.

I liked the way Maas used a subtle fairy tale twist of Red Riding Hood and the wolf as the underlying beginning of the story. The main character Feyre had a difficult life that forced her to be very practical. Raised among people that equally loathed and feared the faeries beyond the border. Humans believe that the faeries are all dangerous monsters.

Feyre kills a wolf for survival, it is the wolf and the meat her family needs or starvation. The thought that the wolf may be a faerie in disguise crosses her mind, but hunger guides her decision. Feyre is forced to accept the consequences of her actions when a terrifying beast arrives at her home demanding retribution.

My only complaint would be the way the book leaves many backstory holes of how certain factions of faeries deal with other factions. Some of this is most likely historical backstory probably revealed in other books in the series. I don’t mind the anticipation it creates for reading the sequel, just the slight confusion of are they friends or enemies?

The covers of the series have a simple cohesive design.

To find more information about Sarah J. Maas, her books, and book tours visit her site:

https://www.sarahjmaas.com

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