A Court of Thorns and Roses

What can I say--this book opens like Hunger Games with a strong, hunting-savvy female lead and then dives into full Beauty and the Beast mode with the addition of fairies and dark fairy bargains.

The story is very straightforward with minimal surprises and uses dark fairytale tropes to its advantage. The first half lags with aimless palace wandering, although gives Feyre a chance to process and settle in.

Some bits were clunky; repeating that fairies were unable to lie too often, the event in the middle of the book, and asking the hero to set snares outside her palace room like fairies wouldn't notice.

I especially enjoyed the beautiful and emotional writing during the blue fairy scene that furthers Feyre's character arc.

Then, the pacing picks up and is maintained through the end with some interesting tension-building challenges. The romantic bits are cute, well-placed and elegantly fade to black. Yet, I wish there were more sister-to-sister scenes with no-nonsense Nesta in the second half.

Best of all: It has an actual natural ending in spite of being a series. Solidly enjoyable read.

ACOTAR follows Feyre, a young woman who cares for her family until she kills a wolf (fae) and is captured by a beast who turns out to be an incredibly handsome but moody/grumpy fae named Tamlin. As she goes through her new life in the Spring Court, she begins to fall for Tamlin, while also realizing things around Spring Court are a bit off - something isn't right. Romance blossoms, problems grow, and she must figure out both what she can do to help and what she is truly feeling for Tamlin.

This was my first dip into fantasy-romance books and it ended with me diving full force into the deep end. I could not put it down, it was fantastic!

I really enjoyed the strong, stubborn, feisty FMC Feyre, she was great! I loved going along with her through her journey. Sarah J. Maas did a great job with world building and descriptions of everything, I felt like I was in the spring court and could visualize it perfectly, as if I was part of the book itself. Tension grew and I was sucked into the story, dying to know what happened next!

Reading ACOTAR opened me up to a whole world of books I never considered and I am so glad I gave it a chance.

If you like world building, fae, heated romance, strong FMC, and general fantasy, this is a must-read!

Thank God that T*mlin lovefest is over and I can move on to more important books. Aka ACOMAF. I only read this so I cam read ACOMAF.