Living in a forest during a freezing winter, Feyre and her family rely on her ability to hunt to keep them alive. When Feyre kills an animal that also happens to be a faerie, she is claimed by the fallen’s friend as payment for her transgression. Whisked off to a magical kingdom, Feyre soon starts to fall for the faerie prince that’s keeping her captive and hoping that she will be the key to his freedom from a curse upon his people.
Lots of my friends on Goodreads have raved over this book, and normally something like this – a retelling of a folk tale filled with brooding faerie princes and a dab of romance – I would eagerly devour and then ask for more. I don’t know if the problem here was because my tastes may have changed, but I found A Court of Thorns and Roses a little boring and too predictable to consider bothering with its sequel. I think at least part of the problem was down to so little really happening – when action did occur, it was well done and I’d start thinking that I was finally starting to enjoy it, only for it to soon relax back into pretty much watching Feyre and Tamlin, her faerie prince, have dinner together.
If it had been badly written, I could have at least had some fun actively hating and rolling my eyes at it, but the most I could really summon over this is a shrug. For me, A Court of Thorns and Roses is ideal for reading as cannon fodder while nursing a mild hangover, but nothing more.