REVIEW: Court of Thorns and Roses

Court of Thorns and Roses
Author: Sarah J. Maas

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I loved the beginning....but somewhere around 1/3 of the way through I started getting some weird vibes from this story. For me, there was just a bit too much torture/rape/kidnapping/female slave imagery to put me off my enjoyment. And it just got worse as the story progressed. As a victim of rape at the hands of "a bad boy'' earlier in life....I don't find the idea of bad boy love triangles or fantasy to be appealing, even when the bad boys are magical mystical fairies. And the plot quickly descended into a love triangle situation with a bad boy/bad boy lite situation.

Meh.

Add in a tropey evil queen and it just sort of fizzled before I even got halfway.

I wanted a bit more Beauty and the Beast type magic.....and a lot less male fairy gropes thighs and ogles heaving breasts action.

But.....my meh reaction might be because this book is written for a YA audience and I'm 50 years old. I learned the hard way years and years ago that bad boys are not so sexy and inviting once you actually catch them and have to live with them. Mine tried to kill me....literally. Best to stick with the good guys. Wish women would take my advice and not have to learn the hard way.....but it seems to be a lesson we all have to learn by experience, not shared hard-earned wisdom.

I will say that Sarah Maas does a great job world building. Hence my 3 star middle ground rating on Goodreads for this book. For the first part of this book the plot, imagery and characters were kicking ass, with a few trope-y details. Any fairy tale re-telling is going to be a bit trope-y by design. But then it just got bogged down in weird sex and torture/abuse situations.

Not for me.

I think I'm going to pass on the rest of this series. I know I'm going against the grain here as this is a very popular series....but not every story is for every reader. And this one just isn't for me. I wanted more fairy tale....and less fairy tail, if that makes sense.