A Court of Thorns and Roses

A Court of Thorns and Roses is a young adult novel that was written by Sarah J Maas and published in 2015.

Synopsis

This book is about a 19-year-old named Feyre who lives on a continent called Prythian which is divided by a magical border separating the human lands from those belonging to the Fae. After she unknowingly kills a Fae, who was disguised as a wolf, she is forced to leave her family and journey to the Fae lands as penance for her crime. She quickly discovers that a magical curse has been placed on the fae lands and all its people and that not everything is as it seems to be.

This book series is one of my favorites, and it quickly rose to the list of my favorite series of all times. This book, however, is the weakest of the original trilogy and is by far my least favorite. So if you get to the end of this book and are unimpressed I strongly encourage you to keep reading.

The author does a reasonably good job at world-building, however, I was very confused for the first chapter or so of this book; I had not read any books involving the Fae before and I felt a little like the author expected me to go into this book with base knowledge that I did not have. It was easy to catch on though and I had no problems with the world building in the rest of the book.

Another problem I had with the book was that the love story fell very flat to me. I am not a fan of the whole “falls in love with her captor” trope and this book has that in spades. I can’t get into it without spoiling the rest of the series, but if that leaves a bad taste in your mouth I promise that the author fixes it in a way that is extremely satisfying.

Recommended For

Teens and young adults and older.

There is no mature content in this book, however, the next books of the series kick the romance up a notch, so if you are uncomfortable with light sexual content you might want to skip this series altogether.

Contraindications/Cautions

Trigger warning for torture, violence, and captivity. I don’t think that these scenes are that graphic but if you are triggered by violence this book does get rather dark so this might be one to skip

Side Effects

Eye rolling at the antics of the heroine- Feyre makes some really poor decisions that aggravated me to no end, but she grows as a character throughout the book and throughout the series.

Falling in love with the Bad guy- one word: Rhysand. I was hooked the minute he appeared. He does some really questionable things throughout this book but man I loved him.

Addiction to the rest of the series- seriously these books are addicting, I’m pretty sure I read the whole trilogy in five days.

Final Thoughts

If none of the above things are triggering for you then I highly recommend this series. It’s well written and has well-developed characters who are flawed but who grow as the series progresses. Most of the problems I had with this book are fixed in the books that follow, so don’t let Stockholm syndrome romance or a luke-warm reaction to this book keep you from finishing the series!

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Check out my Review of the next book in the series: A Court of Mist and Fury

Check out my reviews of two YA fantasy books that are available for preorder: The Storm Crow and Beasts of the Frozen Sun

If you want to take a peek at my other book reviews check them out on my Book Review Page!

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