Kat C

16 hours 7 minutes| Bloomsbury | Fantasy| Release Date: 5/15/2020

I’m really good at reading super hyped YA releases several years after they come out. Like, I pre-ordered The Fault In Our Stars and then didn’t read it until the movie trailer came out three years later. I can’t believe it’s been five years since ACOTAR debuted and I finally decided to see what all the hype (and controversy) was about and read my first Sara J Maas.

Our protagonist is Feyre, a 19-year-old human girl and sole provider for her destitute family. She accidentally kills a faerie and as punishment is whisked away to a faerie court ruled by handsome kindhearted high fae lord and his loyal emissary. The faerie lord allows her to live her life in court as she chooses but there is something sinister lurking underneath the court and she may be central to it all.

The beginning felt plotless and meandered along as Feyre finds her groove in the court. Nothing much happens and I couldn’t believe this was the book I’d been hearing about but then the twist happens. I’m not sure I even knew there was a twist in this book.The twist had some interesting aspects but it sort of muddled all that was established in the beginning and I was never fully captivated.

The one thing I knew for sure about this series is that there is a character named Rhysand and I was just WAITING for him to show up. Look, I am not one for the brooding anti-hero Draco in Leather Pants characters (Cardan, the Darking etc.) but I think he really livened up the story up a bit.

I hybrid read this on audio, which was helpful with the pronunciations. Narrator Jennifer Ikeda has a great range of voices but her style is very one note and she’d sometimes ignore the dialogue tags.

This series famously inspired Soap Gate so I was also expecting it to be a lot steamier. I thought it was about to get wild when we got to the faerie orgy ritual but that fizzled out quickly. I can sort of see how the one sex scene in this book would have been a lot at the time this book came out but from what I was seeing on Twitter I was expecting a lot more. Maybe it’s in the other books ?

I can’t really say I’m intrigued enough to finish the series. The other books are long AF and just too much of a time commitment for the speed I read but I’m glad I got a taste!