A Court of Thorns and Roses – Sarah J. Maas

Summary:
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a beast-like creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only 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 Feyre 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 over the faerie lands is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it… or doom Tamlin-and his world-forever.
Review:
Okay, first off I want to say that while it has been entirely too long since we have posted a review, you should get ready. I’m finally in a place where I have time to read and actually review books again. So this is only the beginning of a review spree.
I’m rereading this series because the newest in the series just came out. This is one of my new favorite series and I hope I can make it yours too. These books are about so much more than what they are actually about and I just want the whole world to love these words as much as I do.
This story opens with an introduction to our main character, Feyre. She’s one of my favorite female main characters out of quite a lot of books I’ve read in the last few years. She’s stubborn but always tries to do the right thing. Even though she is the youngest member of her family, which consists of two sisters and their father all living in poverty, she is the caretaker. She spends her days in the woods hunting. She hunts for food as well as things to sell. Usually keeping half of watch she catches for her family to eat and sells or stores the other half while also selling the skins for whatever she can. She keeps her family from starvation, not that they deserve it. Her sisters don’t care to help and only do because Feyre controls the little money they have to spend and she won’t give them any to spend on nothing if they don’t at the very least help with the chores. Their father is the most useless of all. After losing the family fortune on a risky investment he was beaten by those he owed money to and messed his knee up pretty badly. He mostly spends his time sitting in the house carving little wooden sculptures and being useless.
Feyre and her family live in a rundown cottage just trying to survive in the world. In their world, there is a wall that divides the human population from the Fae population. Faeries are seen as bad, terrifying monsters that live to torture humans. Feyre is always hearing about this or that village that’s been attacked and pillaged by some faerie or another. So the overall view of the Fae is pretty negative. So when Feyre kills a wolf that is actually a faerie in the forest and the faerie’s High Lord comes calling for retribution, it seems like the end of her world. She gives herself up to the creature that comes for her to protect her family and even as she’s being taken away, she’s still trying to make sure her family will survive by telling them what they need to do without her.
This story is amazing because the author gives us just enough information to keep the reader interested and dying to know what’s going to happen next. It’s told in the first person from Feyre’s perspective, which I really enjoy because we get to see the world of faeries from someone who’s afraid and hates the Fae people because of all of the misinformation she’s been given her whole life. I think it’s really interesting to see the world through her eyes because we get to learn about how false all of her misconceptions are. This story is paced nicely, the story flows in a way that makes sense.
One of my favorite things about our main character is her love for painting and the way she sees the world. She sees the world, especially once she goes into faerie, as if she wants to turn it into a painting. Consistently observing colors she’s never seen before and wondering how to make those colors to put on a canvas. I think this was a really interesting method for the author to use to describe setting and such. Seeing the world through Feyre’s eyes we get to see that even though she’s in a place she’s terrified of, it’s a beautiful place and we can tell that because of her extreme desire to paint everything she sees. I guess it’s more that we’re seeing this world through the eyes of an artist. Along with this artists eye comes the fact that she’s incredibly observant. She’s always paying attention, even more so once she’s living within the Spring Court. She’s full of questions once she’s there, even if she’s not asking the right questions at first, I still appreciate this as part of who she is. It’s something that will serve her well.
Okay enough about Feyre, for now. Let’s talk about some other characters. The High Lord, Tamlin. At the start of this story, he seems uninterested. He’s definitely someone with anger issues, this is apparent from the very start. But he seems like maybe he’s not such a bad guy because he could have just killed Feyre and been done with it all. As the story goes on, we see him trying to put more of an effort into befriending our main character, an effort she stubbornly refuses because she’s focused on trying to escape and go back home. Once she realizes there is no escape, she’s more willing to get to know Tamlin. This is also helped by the fact that Tamlin gave her family an incredible amount of money so that they wouldn’t all starve to death without Feyre to care for them. This fact was probably what made her more open to knowing him. Tamlin is portrayed as an honorable, loyal, caring, just all around good guy.
I really enjoyed following Feyre while she discovers that most of the things she thinks she knows about the Fae are in fact false. They can lie, iron has no effect on them, etc, etc. I also really enjoyed getting to experience all of the new holidays and celebrations and whatnot that take place above the wall that she’s never even heard of.
The love affair between Tamlin and Feyre is just so romantic and adorable and cute it’s almost too much. They’re the perfect love story, once Feyre actually lets herself admit that she has feelings for Tam. She’s in denial for quite a while during the time that Tamin is wooing her.
The author does a very good job of showing what’s happening instead of just telling the story, which is something that I’m learning to do better in my own personal writing. So getting to see it in action is nice. Reading the story feels like I’m in it, I’m a part of the story because the author’s showing me whats happening, not is telling me.
Some final thoughts, A Court of Thorns and Roses was an interesting but twisted beauty and the beast sort of story where the weak little human girl saves the world with some help from unlikely friends. There is so much more I could say about this story and the characters in it, but I have three more books in the series to review, so I’m going to focus on the two that this story is focused on. So take my advice and go buy this book so you can love it as much as I do.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.

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