“I love you,” I said, and stabbed him.”

 – Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorn and Roses

Grade: 2.5

I fell in love with the writing style of Maas in her Assassins Blade series so I was psyched to read something different by her. Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairy tales and I expected this book to be both exciting and beautifully written. I was partly right.

When Feyre kills a Fae wolf  she is given the choice to either live out her time in the Fae realm or die by the Fae’s family member Tamlin, but Feyre soon learns that life in this realm has opportunities as well as evil lurking everywhere. There is a curse on Tamlin’s family and as her feelings for him grow, ignoring the curse grows harder too.

First, although this book is being billed as YA  by many, it really isn’t. It’s more Fantasy or New Adult. There’s a lot of “sexy stuff” happening which is usually only hinted at in YA. I think readers need to be aware of this, and this is why I’m categorizing it in Fantasy on this blog.

If Maas had stuck to a Beauty and the Beast story I think I would have really liked this book. The romance is nice, the writing is still beautifully all Maas. But ugh, the plot, the world building, and the lore. UGH. I was so bored! I’m going to be honest and say I ended up skimming the last 1/4 of this book.

The things that are so inherently awesome about Belle in B&B is that’s she’s smart and spunky. She may be kind and gracious, but she’s never a doormat. Feyre on the other hand is TSTL. I just hated her. The other characters were interesting enough, but even they didn’t seem to hold much depth. They weren’t as well rounded as I’m used to seeing from Maas.

In the end though, it was the lore that did me in. I’m okay, intrigued even, with the twisting of fairy tale lore. You want your Vampires to sparkle? Okay but they still need to drink blood. As soon as they don’t I’m out.  So all the sudden I’m reading this Fairy book where the Fae just didn’t act like Fae. This is just a deal breaker for me.