Right
off the bat, I’d like to start off this review by mentioning that A Court of Thorns and Roses is the first
book by Sarah J. Maas that I’ve ever read, and Maas definitely made a phenomenal
first impression with this book. It has been a goal of mine to read at least
one of Sarah J. Maas’ books for about a year now, since I’ve heard a lot of
great things about her books from people on BookTube. The reason I chose to start
with A Court of Thorns and Roses,
instead of her book, Throne of Glass, is due the fact that A Court of Thorns and Roses is very
loosely based on the story of Beauty and
the Beast, and I’m a HUGE fan of fairytale retellings. Once Upon a Time and Grimm are
two of my favorite TV shows, I love the movie Into the Woods, and I’m also a huge fan of Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series. As for A Court of Thorns and Roses being
somewhat of a retelling of Beauty and the
Beast, I thought that this book was a very clever take on the story.
The
overall pacing of the plot of the book was definitely handled very well, in my
opinion. The book starts on a very interesting note, and I thought that Maas
did a great job of not taking forever for the plot of the book to really get
moving after Feyre kills what she thought was a wolf, but was actually a faerie
in disguise, and unwittingly breaking the treaty that exists between the humans
and the faeries by doing so. When a wolf faerie shows up at her family’s home,
demanding retribution for Feyre killing the wolf faerie, she chooses to
willingly go live with Tamlin, who’s the High Lord of the Spring Court, at his
manor for the rest of her life, as payment for breaking the treaty.
Now
that I’m an adult, when it comes to the story of Beauty and the Beast, there’s always been a part of me that has
felt compelled to make jokes about the relationship between Belle and the Beast,
and her falling in love with him being a case of Stockholm syndrome. That being
said, I honestly can’t say the same thing about Maas’ writing for the
relationship between Feyre and Tamlin. There’s definitely quite a bit of
tension between the two of them when Feyre first comes to live with Tamlin, but
I still feel like he acted fairly civil and accommodating towards her. I really like the fact
that at the beginning of the book, when Feyre is first getting to know Tamlin,
it’s clear that she has come to believe a lot of lies and misconceptions about
faeries that she was probably raised to believe. I found that initial tension
between the two of them rather interesting, and I felt like Maas handled the
progression and evolution of their relationship throughout the book very well.
Feyre and Tamlin’s relationship definitely isn’t a case of insta-love.
Personally, I think that’s great to see, because a lot of YA and New Adult
books seem to be plagued with cases of insta-love, which is pretty much always
beyond frustrating. In my opinion, the relationship between Bella and Edward
from the Twilight series is one of
the worst cases of insta-love that I’ve ever encountered, but I digress.
