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A review by emmacb
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
adventurous
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Teenage Emma would probably have EATEN this up.
Adult Emma is less of a convert.
It's not that it was bad, it just had enough that mildly irritated me to prevent it from hooking me.
Things reducing the rating:
1) basically beauty and the beast with fae
2) didn't warm to any of the main characters, I found them all kind of selfish, even though they sort of did selfless things, it all still mostly felt done in a self-centred way!
3) the book skipped over the bit where the main characters actually started falling in love with a 'we spent lots of time together and grew closer each other' paragraph or 2 after a few hostile, then slightly less so quippy interactions. Might just be me but I wasn't super satisfied by how quickly these characters were in 'kill for you die for you' love. The process went hostile --> cautiously accepting --> LOVE FOREVER
4) really undiverse. Like, you have Fae and the most you're going for is one or two (that I spotted) brown/black people (and it seemed to be that it was a little bit 'people from that court have brown skin'), and also they have white hair and blue eyes which is cool looking in concept but a bit of a trope at this point for people of colour in mostly white books. Let's not even get into how all those Fae could have been bi and gay and trans and everything fun in-between! Why are they all so boring and heteronormative!? To be fair I haven't read any further books, maybe it improves, but start as you mean to go on!
5) the tone reminded me of fanfiction. Not that fanfiction is bad, but it had a similar tendency to overly brooding characters and OP moments for drama!
6) not as spicy as I had been led to believe. Lots of fade to black moments.
I did read it quickly, and it was engaging, but it hasn't hooked me into the series. The world building is pretty good in that I'll probably read a Wikipedia article or something to find out what happens in the rest of the series because I'm curious, but not so curious as to read several more books!
Adult Emma is less of a convert.
It's not that it was bad, it just had enough that mildly irritated me to prevent it from hooking me.
Things reducing the rating:
1) basically beauty and the beast with fae
2) didn't warm to any of the main characters, I found them all kind of selfish, even though they sort of did selfless things, it all still mostly felt done in a self-centred way!
3) the book skipped over the bit where the main characters actually started falling in love with a 'we spent lots of time together and grew closer each other' paragraph or 2 after a few hostile, then slightly less so quippy interactions. Might just be me but I wasn't super satisfied by how quickly these characters were in 'kill for you die for you' love. The process went hostile --> cautiously accepting --> LOVE FOREVER
4) really undiverse. Like, you have Fae and the most you're going for is one or two (that I spotted) brown/black people (and it seemed to be that it was a little bit 'people from that court have brown skin'), and also they have white hair and blue eyes which is cool looking in concept but a bit of a trope at this point for people of colour in mostly white books. Let's not even get into how all those Fae could have been bi and gay and trans and everything fun in-between! Why are they all so boring and heteronormative!? To be fair I haven't read any further books, maybe it improves, but start as you mean to go on!
5) the tone reminded me of fanfiction. Not that fanfiction is bad, but it had a similar tendency to overly brooding characters and OP moments for drama!
6) not as spicy as I had been led to believe. Lots of fade to black moments.
I did read it quickly, and it was engaging, but it hasn't hooked me into the series. The world building is pretty good in that I'll probably read a Wikipedia article or something to find out what happens in the rest of the series because I'm curious, but not so curious as to read several more books!