Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses

Marie Mangion
Oct 11, 2015
4 min read

So I don’t usually re-read books, but I loved the story in A Court of Thorns and Roses so much that I just had to. If you wanna badger a guess, my girl Nina also recommended this book to me. To say that A Court of Thorns and Roses written by Sarah J Maas is good, is an understatement. I loved the entirety of the book very much. Although there isn’t a lot of action outside the Spring Court, Maas builds the entire realm of Prythian and even the human realm very well. I found no holes or questionable ventures within her world building. Also, the character building and development is very well done as every action/emotion within a character is conducted at the right pace. She also creates characters which you can’t help but love (Nesta – this is how I feel about you).

I very much enjoyed the storyline of A Court of Thorns and Roses – I believed it to be interesting and I’ve never read anything that portrayed faeries in such a way. From the moment I started reading the book, I couldn’t put it down, I wanted to know what happened, and that plus the interest of the book spurred me on to finish the novel in the span of a day. The story has an underlying tone of Beauty and the Beast, and while that is present, the story is completely different at the same time.

And also the appeal of the male Fae: Tamlin and Rhysand; I’m looking at you. A novel can’t really be complete without the presence of a hot male protagonist(ish), and here they are. We find out that Tamlin is indeed High Lord of the Spring Court and honestly this revelation made me think of him even hotter (if that’s even possible). Ah, but in all good books you need another hot male on the other side to balance things out right? Well, here is where Rhysand comes in – as High Lord of the Night Court and possessor of Feyre for one week every month for the rest of her life due to a bargain they made. Both of these Fae are incredibly powerful and both have very strong personalities.

So pretty much, Feyre is the damsel in distress. Except she’s not a damsel and she’s not in distress either. She’s a badass who kills giant wolves, but also has a wicked sense of humour, never failing to bring some comedic relief into the novel. Her relationship with Tamlin starts off icy, but then she begins to warm to him and eventually they both fall in love with each other. But unfortunately, as Feyre is unable to admit it to Tamlin’s face, she is then sent on a quest of sorts to prove her love. She suffered so much just because she didn’t say those three little words EVEN THOUGH TAMLIN HAD ALREADY SAID THEM TO HER.

I actually can’t get over this once scene in the book where Tamlin comes home from Calanmai and runs into Feyre and basically he was all like, “I smelled you, and you weren’t there” and he bit her neck in the sexiest way and just: ‘He brought his lips to my ear. “I would have been gentle with you, though.” I shuddered as I closed my eyes. Every inch of my body went taut as his words echoed through me. “I would have had you moaning my name throughout it all. And I would have taken a very, very long time, Feyre.”’ As if that isn’t the sexiest thing you’ve ever read, it had me like:

Also, I want to comment on the fact that although I didn’t read this book when it came out in May of this year (2015) I still don’t want to wait the seven or so months until the next book in the series is released BECAUSE I JUST WANT MORE TAMLIN AND MORE TAMLIN/FEYRE ACTION. And I was stalking Maas on Goodreads (not even sorry) and I saw that there is also going to be a third book aswell? I can’t even deal with this right now.

You know what else I can’t deal with? Cliffhangers. Like at the end of the book where Rhysand stumbles because he sees something in Feyre’s face – but we don’t know what that is? I’ve seen some things where people think that what Rhysand has realized is that Feyre is his mate. It’s a solid theory, but it creates some problems, such as:

If Feyre didn’t even become High Fae then he wouldn’t have had a mate?
This mate thing would just create some epic love triangle which I think would honestly bring down the book.

Basically, I’m in love with pretty much everything in relation to this book – except a few minor storyline things which frustrated me, but no story goes the way you want it to and it isn’t a good book without some problems and such so I’ll just have to deal with it, haha. I also found myself skipping bits in the book with no dialogue as I was so anxious to get on with the story and know what happens. I then had to go back and re-read which is a problem for me as it slows the process down – it has nothing to do with the lack of interest, its more of the amount of interest I have in the novel.

Overall, I’d recommend this book to absolutely everyone. You should all read it, and then we can fangirl over it together. I give a solid no questions asked