A Court of Thorns and Roses

It took me some time to determine what rating I was going to give this book.

Quick plot summary:

Feyre (Fay-ruh, per Maas) lives in a world where the only thing separating humans from various magical beings is a wall. She supports her poor, needy family by hunting for food and sells animal pelts for cold hard cash at the market. Through a series of events, Feyre ends up living with a faerie beyond the wall, believing herself to be stuck there forever. Here’s where it becomes a faerie-take on Beauty and the Beast. There’s a curse and Feyre has to help break it or else lose the faerie that she’s fallen in love with.

To start, I was very cynical about this book for the first 64 pages. The first chapter reminded me way too much of the first chapter of The Hunger Games. The writing initially felt choppy, overly descriptive yet somehow redundant – as if someone was overeagerly using a thesaurus. Everything happened simultaneously too slow yet too fast for these first pages.

Not to mention, the incessant use of the terminology “hissed” and “clicked their tongue” throughout the entire book bugged the hell out of me.

Nevertheless, I stuck with the book (as I always give a novel 50-75 pages to enthrall me before I call it quits) and I’m pleased that I did. Despite the initial shortcomings of this book, I found myself sucked into the world and storyline. There were some surprising occurances throughout the plot, which was refreshing, as the overarching storyline was rather predictable. More than once did I find myself shutting the book to stare off “Office-style” into space and thinking “oh that did not just happen”.

I wish the character development for everyone all around was a bit more flushed out, but hopefully we’ll get more of that in the next book (which will be arriving in a few days). This was your typical Young Adult romance, as far as the love-story growth goes – drop dead gorgeous man falls for the “plain” heroine. I will give Maas credit though, as she referenced past “memories” of Feyre’s throughout the book, reminding the reader that not every moment that passed between Feyre and the faerie (Tamlin) that she fell in love with was written down, which makes the love story feel less rushed than that of, say, Twilight.

After page 64, I genuinely could not put this book down until I read the very last word, which is why I credit Maas with a 4 star rating on this.

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