A Court of Thorns and Roses

I have really mixed feelings about this book. OK, so it took me a long time to get through it. I devoured three other books while I kept putting this down and picking it up again. I think I found Fayre, the main character, a little hard to relate to or feel anything for. I didn’t particularly like her, but there were other characters that I did like, such as Lucien, Rhysand and Nesta. Feyre likes to paint and I think this is where the empathy is supposed to come through – oh, look, she paints, so she has got a heart, but it didn’t quite hit the mark. This is at the older end of young adult with some very raunchy scenes. I didn’t mind them but it’s something to keep in mind. The writing style was stilted at times and her overuse of repetition can become distracting, pulling you out of the story rather than enhancing it. Some descriptions were just strange but then others were beautiful. It was a bit of a slow start. Towards the end I was thinking oh god, there’s still 20% left, but as it turned out that was the section I enjoyed most. This pulled it from being 2.5 stars to 3. I can see why this is such a huge hit. I have the second and third book on my kindle but I’m not sure when the mood will take me to pick them up. I’m certainly not rushing for them, but maybe they’ll keep calling out to me to be read, just like this one did.     

So I finally finished a Sarah J. Maas book! It's been a long time coming, but of course I was going to end up reading this one - a combined re-imagining of 'Beauty & The Beast' and the lesser known Scottish folk tale 'Tam Lin'. It took me a lot longer to get through this one than I would have liked, mostly because despite the fact that I did like it, I couldn't quite bring myself to fall in love. As far as MCs go, Feyre was pretty good. She was tough and realistic, though at times her tendency to inner ramble wore on me. Tamlin, her love interest, I quite liked at first but as the book progressed I realised that not only did I begin to question a few of his motives as more of his past was revealed, I found him a bit too dull: especially in comparison to characters filled with personality such as Rhysand and Lucien. It will be interesting to see how they and Nesta (who I think has SO much potential) develop in Book Two, as well as whether I continue to like Tamlin as the object of Feyre's affections. I feel like Maas might be trying to sneak in a Hades & Persephone style story-line in the future and I have to say if I'm right then it's ramped up my excitement for 'A Court Of Mist & Fury' tenfold! The world-building is nicely introduced though I still felt it skimped on some of the details, choosing to take more of an info-dumping approach later on via Alis rather than using more of that time that Feyre spends prancing and painting around the Spring Court. The thing is, I DO really want to know what happens next but I can't bring myself to lie and say that this book gave me that blown away feeling. It's a really good story on creatures that are rarely focused on: the Fae. But I never felt truly gripped by the plot (the pacing was a little hot and cold) and can't help but feel like I wanted more from a book that set the Blogging world on fire that was written by a widely loved Author in the YA Fantasy community.