Throne of Glass

I went into this thinking I wasn't going to enjoy it that much, mostly because a couple other books on this YA list, that I'm slowly going through, haven't been all that great, coughGracelingcough, and admittedly, for the first few chapters I was checked out because I genuinely thought it was going to be the same as the other newer high fantasy YA that've been on this list.
But it surprised me and I found myself actually invested in the story and completing the whole thing at 3 a.m. because it kept me intrigued till the last page.

After looking through the reviews I feel like a lot of people's critiques are that they found the heroine to be too ‘not like other girls' and I get why they feel that way however, I felt like that trope was done in a way that I didn't find Celaena to be annoying. It wasn't like crazy good assassin from birth, somehow gets plucked off the street by prince to compete in competition, being a crazy good assassin was something that took years of training and didn't come easy and she wasn't plucked off the streets, she was dragged out of a death camp where she was imprisoned.

Another criticism was too much show not enough tell, that one has merit in some aspects but, I was okay with it. It allowed for the story to move along. Calaena was malnourished and emaciated from being in the camp how are you going to ‘show' that she's highly trained right away, in a way relevant to the plot? could it be done? sure, maybe, I'm not a writer, but I was fine with just being told she's a ‘amazing assassin' until it could actually be shown.

Low key feel that a sizable portion of bad reviews are from people who just don't like Sarah. J. Maas, and hate read this, Which, hey, whatever floats your boat man, if that's not the case then I'd be surprised. It's a really good YA fantasy (I'm looking at you, the reviews that thought it was going to be GoT, why would you think that? GoT is 600+ pages of adult fantasy told from like 15 PoVs. If someone told you this was gonna be that, then they don't read fantasy at all). I don't know, maybe it's because I didn't read the synopsis or watch any in depth reviews before I started it but, I thought this was an intriguing story and paced really well. I thought it better than most other YA fantasy that've read. 

I'd give it a solid 4 1/2 stars.