Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - A Court of Thorns and Roses

Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

211 reviews

allys_shelf's review against another edition

2.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Content Warnings

abbycole's review against another edition

2.75

adventurous dark fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

unsurprising that i didn't love this smutty uncomplicated fantasy, however i was definitely entertained and honestly i'll read the next book because it took so little brainpower to read

Content Warnings

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

0.25

adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I will start by saying that I can totally get why people enjoy this book. There are scenes where I could find myself really enjoying the book and beginning to fall into it, but it never properly lasted. I think if I turned my brain off for the book I would have enjoyed it far more, but the book doesn’t set the reader up to turn their brain off, so I could never fully fall into it.

Aside from that, I generally enjoyed the prose. There were moments I really enjoyed it and felt like it captured a certain feeling of magic. The biggest example being the Firelight Festival and the Summer Solstice celebration, it captured a feeling of old magic and enchantment that I really enjoyed. There were several points that I found the exposition for the world building fairly well done, though there were a handful of moments it felt like info dumping.

Finally, the audiobook narrator did an amazing job and I really enjoyed her performance. She also pronounced Rhysand so it sounded like “reason” and it cracked me up, so that’s another point in her favour.

OKAY THAT ASIDE! Spoilers ahead, I have A LOT to say about this book.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of SA, sexual harassment, drugging, & victim blaming

A Court of Thorns and Roses it a story about a 19-year-old human, Feyre, that is lied to and intimidated into coming to the home of a hot fey man that is several hundred years old. Why is she coming to his home? So she can fall in love with him obviously, but she doesn’t know that bc she’s told she needs to come to the fey land as penance for killing a fey. After being told she doesn’t have to stay at Hot Fey Man #1’s house by Hot Fey Man #1, the book immediately forgets and makes a big deal about her trying to escape. Eventually, she falls in love with Hot Fey Man #1 only to be sent away because Dangerous Things Are Coming. She returns to rescue Hot Fey Man #1 and ends up stuck doing 3 trials or solving a very simple riddle that the answer is obviously love to save him and their buddies. To complete the three trials she teams up with Hot Fey Man #2, who spends their time as allies sexually assaulting and drugging her! But it’s okay because it’s for “her own good”. (Gross!!!) Eventually she solves the riddle after a lot of suffering and basically getting beat to death. Then she’s revived and Hot Fey Man #2 is teased as a future smooch interest.

So, I have a LOT of thoughts on this book. To start, let’s tackle my biggest issue: The romanticisation of SA.

While at the beginning of the book we don’t see any of this, we have our first hint at the end of the Firelight Festival where Tamlin (Hot Fey Man #1) is all horny, can smell Feyre has been at the festival. Afterwards he encounters her in the house before the horny magic as worn off. What does he do? Well he pins her to the wall of course. She tells him to let her go, but he doesn’t. Instead he tells her how gentle he would have been if he got to have sex with her at the Horny Festival. He stops pinning her then, but Feyre continues to VERBALLY say that she’s not interested in engaging in anything. What does Tamlin do? Well obviously he bites and kisses her neck what else. Then he leaves. The next morning when Feyre wants to make him feel bad about it, he instead blames her for being out and about that night. While Feyre was told to remain in her room, she was given no explanation as to why, and was lured there by fey magic. Furthermore, she repeatedly did not give consent, which Tamlin ignored. The victim blaming, however, matched only by how that scene and the events after are portrayed as sexy and heavily romanticised. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine if Feyre is into having her neck bitten, but it’s completely different when she doesn’t give consent and the book hypes up how sexy it is Tamlin just takes what he wants. This later shows up again with Rhysand (Hot Fey Man #2.) Once he and Feyre make an agreement he’ll help her with the trials, every night he brings her to a party, drugs her, and makes her give him lap dances and dress in skimpy clothes. This is later justified by it being “for her own good and protection”. Overall, the way the book handled these topics was gross, and it’s not helped that it seems to want to reader to like and kind of fall for Rhysand a bit by the end.

Next is the characters. This is a romance novel, so obviously the characters should be likeable and the reader should be invested in them. By the time I hit the 60% mark I had one character I liked and by the end I didn’t like any of them. That doesn’t mean I can’t see the appeal in some instances. Tamlin had plenty of scenes where he was very endearing and sweet (his awkward compliments of Feyre at the beginning, giving her dirty poems using the words she struggled to read, and heightening her senses so she could hear the willow tree sing to name a few) and I can understand why people like Nesta after going through and entire book of very bland, one note female characters. Her rudeness, spunk, and straightforwardness are a welcome change of pace. However, throughout the entire novel I found just about every character switching between unlikeable, tolerable, and likeable. None felt particularly consistent, one moment Lucien (Hot Fey Man #1’s bestie) are having fun and enjoying each other’s company, the next he’s snarking at her for killing his friend. (Which it’s fair to be upset, but bro y’all literally sent the man out to be killed so some random human chick could come smooch Tamlin. This is not on her and she wasn’t even 100% sure he WAS fey.) Most characters fell into this cycle of being friendly and likeable and then railing against Feyre for things she didn’t know or understand because they weren’t explained to her. Not to say Feyre is much better, I personally found her insufferable, but at least she was consistent in that. I was also confused by people’s love of Elaine and Nesta at the beginning. While I understood Nest’s appeal by the end, the book tells you Elaine does nothing because there’s not a single thought in her head. She’s bland and one note, just pretty, nice, and stupid. Those three things do not a likeable character make.

I also overall found the consistency in the book lacking. We’re beat over the head at the beginning with the information fey can’t lie, but they frequently do and it isn’t until the end we’re told that tidbit that kept slapping us in the face wasn’t true. (I will be fair though and admit I might have forgotten the scene where it’s mentioned.) There was also the issue of Feyre constantly saying she didn’t trust Tamlin and Lucien, but then being upset when they themselves didn’t trust her. This was especially obnoxious when she had barely been around them for a week. It made the book feel like it needed a few more rounds of edits to catch these consistency issues and make sure it was called out when ideas were being proven wrong. The issues of consistency also spill into character development. One moment Feyre hates the fey, the next she loves them and hates humans because they aren’t as hot or graceful. Not having a consistent arc for the characters or consistency in the world made it hard for me to keep up with things and often left me wondering if I had missed scenes.

Finally, general flow of the story. I think the beginning was too condensed and the ending too spread out. I think if there were more time skips at the beginning showing us Feyre meeting the major players and then allowing more time to pass for a more natural flow of relationship growth. Having them quickly start to fall for each other within 2-3 weeks and then skipping over huge portions to get to the festivals and steamy scenes feels like a cop out and like we were deprived of watching a romance legitimately bloom between these two.

Final short notes. I will always make a disgusted face at the use of “female” and “male” as nouns and the use of “my mate”. It’s gross, I don’t like it. Also if I hear “I could never paint it” or “my bowels turned to water” (girl just say you shit yourself it’s okay) one more time I will lose my mind.

In conclusion, I can see why people enjoy this, if I turned my brain off I likely could. However the book refuses to set you up for such and in the interim romanticises SA and unhealthy relationships. Also Tamlin’s a creepy for only taking the 19-year-old human that killed a fey and not one of the older women that were stated to have also killed fey unprovoked because they were “too old”. Tamlin, I seriously doubt only grandmas were killing wolves.

Content Warnings

mollyschn's review against another edition

0.5

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Where to begin... this was just horrible. Literally a remix of Twilight. I don't get why this is popular. Read something better written, please.

Content Warnings

skylover's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Got this book on a whim bc I heard so many great things and wanted to see what the hype was about, After 14 chapters of slow, boring, world-building content, I put the book down and planned to DNF. I recently read Fourth Wing (which is incredible from start to finish), and wanted another fantasy read when I saw this book unfinished on my shelf. I think another fantasy book needed to come along to show me why it takes so long to build the world and why it's important to explain in such long detail. Second go-around, I finished ACOTAR in less than 24 hours. Spoilers ahead:

Pros: Lucien is a ride-or-die fav, he's so witty and reminds me of that enemies to best friends vibe so few characters have with one another. Rhys, while being a tad toxic, was a unpredictable character that added a thrill to under the mountain. The villain was interesting and I enjoyed learning about the lore and other good or evil characters for the worlds.

Cons: Not a fan that most of the romance was borderline abusive or straight up harassment (Rhys LICKING her tears?? Tamlin BITING her neck?? no thanks), Tamlin was the most disinteresting love interest, Feyre was difficult to get behind for the first half of the book, and turning her into High Fae reminded me of Twilight, but instead of waiting 4 books and having arguments with her partner about it, she was just turned without her knowledge or consent. Also not a fan that the plot was kinda giving "can't live without my guy/romantic interest" vibes. Lastly, idk what kinda writing style this was, but it was very repetitive and redundant - if you highlighted your book when the phrases "he (Tamlin) growled", "he (Tamlin or Rhys) gave a lazy smile", Feyre mentioned her newfound love of painting (we get it, you don't hunt so you paint - cool!), random fire being mentioned, or eyes as green as (the forest, grass, emerald jewels, shrek at this point, you name it) - you'd have a very colorful book cause you had to use so many highlighters.

Would recommend to fantasy lovers who know how to get into world building.

Content Warnings

nurseamandarose's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

caseydouglas1's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

fpgreviews's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

smithrachaelynn's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I’ve read this a bunch of times, but people always recommend the GraphicAudio. I’m so glad I listened! This story never gets old and I loved hearing a whole cast play these characters.
This was paced really well too. I noticed a lot of things that I didn’t catch when reading, which was cool too. Listening also made me realize how dark and intense this book was. Hearing it out loud made that really sink in for me and appreciate how much these characters really go through.

Content Warnings

nagisasigh's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ACOTAR may be the world building book for the series, but to me it wouldve been this good even on its own. If youve never read fantasy before, get through the first 25 pages before you walk away. I was worried that the romance aspect would eclipse the plot, but I was very pleasantly surprised!

Content Warnings

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