The existence of fae in A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas should have been a warning sign enough for me to avoid this book. I’ve had bad experiences with fae in the past—namely, The Cruel Prince. And people loved the series, despite my developing an aversion to it. Maybe I don’t have a taste for romance, as most fae-based YA reads are romance first and fantasy second. But there’s no doubt that these works pale in comparison to romance classics such as Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre—rather than the fleshing out of characters, it’s mostly centered on the somewhat author-self-insert seeming brusqueness of the male characters and “pick-me” vibes of the protagonist, which were apparent throughout these novels, ACOTAR especially.
This novel is set in a world where humans and magical creatures called fairies, who are divided into High Fae and Lower Fae, live in separate territories of their world barricaded by a magical barrier. Our main character, Feyre, happens to live next to the barrier. When, in her desperation to supply her family, she happens to kill a wolf by the barrier, she realizes later that it wasn’t in fact a wolf but a fairy that had crossed the barrier. With this blunder, Feyre is taken prisoner by a High Fae, who happens to be one of the High Lords of fae-land…and he just keeps her at his place until…well, when things happened, coincidentally.
You can probably tell that there wasn’t much plot to this book, because there wasn’t. About two-thirds of the book was just Feyre loitering around in the High Lord’s manor, literally not doing anything but paint (which did not add anything to the story at all but instead felt tacked on to give her some character flavor, which I agree she lacked), hunt, and whine about her situation. I say this because every pivotal turn in this story was very plot-driven, rather than character-driven. Everything she found out or experienced was due to coincidences of being at the right place, right time on one of her stupid endeavors to sneak out to see more of this new fae-land or to get a midnight snack from the kitchen. Even the main antagonist of this book was defeated with a mere riddle with the most cliche answer possible. You could probably guess what it is.
And let’s not even get started with the male characters in the book. I should’ve known what was coming—fantasy romance books like these read like a Wattpad story and, for some reason, have some prolific sexual assault. Feyre actually happens to get sexually assaulted by not one, not two, but five male characters in this book alone.
Another thing about this book is that it’s supposed to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling, which I honestly wouldn’t have noticed if it didn’t say anything about it. First of all, this book takes out all the essential elements of the fairy tale, first and foremost with the beast being ugly. There are no physical difficulties for Feyre to get over for the male lead, Tamlin. She literally assumes he’s just really good-looking under the mask, which he’s cursed to wear. If there is any similarity between the classic fairytale and this steaming mess of a book, it’s that both are overly simplified. ACOTAR does try to add a semblance of politics and whatnot in the fae-land, but it’s mostly just trimmings wrapped around the romance influx of this book.
Still, this book had no plot and very little spiciness—it cannot even be considered softcore erotica. If you’re not going to give us a plot, why is this book still lacking steam? At least choose one to cultivate so that the reader does not die out of lack of patience for its one-dimensional characters and the spicy scenes that never even come.
~1 star.
