I just finished reading A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I have some very mixed opinions on it. This book generally has a good plot and the characters are really well thought out. This book series has been quite popular since 2023, and I just read the first book.

The story is about a girl named Feyre who lives in a cabin with her sisters Elain, and Nesta, and her father. Since they don’t have a lot of money, Feyre has to hunt in order to keep her family alive. While she is out hunting she shoots a wolf, skins it, keeps its meat, and sells it’s pelt for a large sum of money. She goes home and feeds her family and during a dinner a man who resembles a warrior breaks down the door and enters her home. He then screams at her family because the wolf that she killed wasn’t a wolf, it was a faerie who was this man’s friend. She then is told that she could either die or go live with him in the faerie land of Prythian. She then learns his name is Tamlin and she goes and lives with him.

There, she meets his friend Lucien. Tamiln and Lucien teach her all sorts of different faerie customs. We learn that she loves to paint and Tamlin lets him do whatever she wants on the compound. She goes to many events that she is and isn’t invited to. Eventually Feyre falls in love with Tamlin and Tamlin does too. One day she is in Tamlin’s office and Rhysand, The high Fae of the Night Court comes into Tamlin’s office and says that Feyre should have been killed. Here is the catch, The treaty states that Feyre should’ve been executed, not let to live. Tamlin lied about her living there because he was so intrigued by Feyre that he let her live with him. Out of fear of dying or letting Feyre rot in the Night Court dungeons, Tamlin tells Feyre that she needs to go back to the human realm. Tamlin says that he loves her and Feyre upset doesn’t say it back before she leaves and goes back home.

After reuniting with her sisters a little while later she gets word that Amarantha, a queen and comander, has taken him as prisoner under a mountain. Feyre then goes under the mountain and must fight in trials to win Tamlin’s freedom back. Considering that she is a human these tasks are no easy game. After one of the tasks she gets severely hurt in the arm and gets an infection there. The Lord of the Night Court, Rhysand, makes a deal with her that for 1 week every month she shall live with him in the Night Court if he heals her arm. She reluctantly agrees and makes the deal with Rhys. Eventually she comes to her final trial which calls for her to murder 3 faerie people and one including Tamlin. She tells Amarantha that she will not kill Tamlin and that isn’t fair. We then learn that Tamlin lied to Feyre because there was no treaty, but there was a curse. Tamlin had to find a human to love him before 7 years was over. Feyre happened to meet that criteria. She and Amarantha get into a tumble and in the killing blow she takes to Amarantha, Amarantha snaps Feyre’s neck killing her. The High lords then rescue her and she goes back to the Spring Court to live with Tamlin.

Personally this book was a 3/5 star book. It wasn’t necessarily the best book I’ve read, but it was pretty good. As of right now, I just finished the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, and I really liked that book so the series does in fact get better the more you read it. I would say that the topics of both books and some parts were slightly PG-13. This was a very interesting take on beauty and the beast in a way which was highly interesting. All in all, the world building and the characters were great in this book.