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Pia

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Pia is currently reading

A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)

by Sarah J. Maas (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in January 2026

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Pia said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" I tried to start this book with as open a mind as possible. A lot of friends and colleagues love this series and thus I decided to give it a try. I have been invited to a book club where this is the first book discussed. I really wanted to read it an I tried to start this book with as open a mind as possible. A lot of friends and colleagues love this series and thus I decided to give it a try. I have been invited to a book club where this is the first book discussed. I really wanted to read it and enjoy a discussion, even if it would not be my favourite read. However, this book enrages me in a way, I have rarely experienced. I am just about to cross the 50% mark and I literally threw it down two times in the last 5 minutes.
If I do decide to finish this book (probably only happening if I go to the book club) I'll update. Otherwise consider this a DNF.

Let's get into it.
I did not mind the first pages of the story. It starts slow, it is pretty clear that we are faced with a female hero that might fall into the "not like other girls" trope and that probably is some mysterious chosen one. Getting to know the characters, the father, the sister, our main character and their story was interesting enough and my mind was swirling with ideas of where the story might be going. Then Tamlin appears and all of a sudden, the family and all the characters we got to know just kind of become unimportant and are just there to make Feyre want to go back home.

And from this point onwards it goes downhill for me. It's not even the plot or the slowness of the story, it's mostly the fact that how she behaves makes absolutely zero sense for the way her character is set up.

I appreciate that Feyre is not loving having to live with creatures she has been told to be afraid of for her entire life. However, it frustrated me to no end that she is so unwilling to listen to them. Several times I had the strong impression if she were just willing to let them talk, let them show her around, if she'd just play along, this would very much serve her. It enrages me that she wants to leave and go back to her family so badly and still does absolutely the worst in actually achieving that. Instead of trying to play along and thereby learning more of her surroundings, her captors and the place she is supposed to remain in, she alienates everyone around and acts like a very annoying little child. Thereby eliminating any possible way of leaving the situation by just learning about it and evaluating what could be done about it.

I do not know how often it is emphasized that the Fae are the most dangerous thing and that they can kill her in an instant. Same goes for all the things that she encounters, such as the creatures lurking in the court or the Fae and faeries attending the spring festival. Despite her clearly being aware of the danger, experiencing it and actually being scared, she sometimes just seems to forget and proceeds to act completely counterintuitively. For example, she is thoroughly warned not to go out to the festival, yet she does, is being threatened twice, brought back home, learns why it's dangerous and is clearly scared. Yet, she decides to leave her room again. How incredibly stupid is she? It does not even make sense for her character to be scared one minute and then just head into danger knowingly anyway for nothing more than curiosity and some very weird jealousy.

What puts it over the top for me is the inconsistency of her thoughts and dialogue. She wants to go home to protect her family because she promised she would. She learns her family is protected. Even though they treat her very poorly, she would likely die on her way there and the fact that they are very well taken care of, that is still not enough to make her believe that she has done what she could and she is fulfilling the promise she gave. It is never even clearly set up why that promise is so important to her despite everything that happened since. Why does she feel so guilty? Up until she gets kidnapped she did everything she could. So where does this guilt come from? I guess I'll never know. She thinks about how she feels conflicted and wants to not leave them alone and then in the very next sentence she tells Tamlin something entirely different, that we have never heard of before even though we are living in her mind. I thought she may be setting up a lie but no. Her thought after saying what she says it "Now it's out" even though she has never had any kind of thought of anything similar to what she just expressed. What the fuck?

Same applies to her attraction to Tamlin. I do not mind a poorly written romance, I have read more than enough guilty pleasure romances to know what to expect. It is mind boggling to me that the romance is so poorly set up that I was kind of startled by it. Like how do you go from "I hate this guy" to "I want to fuck this guy" without any prior indication just because he puts off his shirt? Girl, what are you doing? Also, the word "crotch" is not helping in making me feel any kind of way here. Is "I felt the heat in my crotch" supposed to make me feel sexy?

Long story short, I do not think this book is for me. I cannot overlook the inconsistencies and the way the emotional and/or sexual story is set up. I kind of hate this book. ...more "

progress:

(40%)
— Jan 17, 2026 06:17AM

Jan 17, 2026 06:17AM · see review