A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) Review & Rant

hello everyone welcome back to my channel my name is Jordan and today we're gonna be talking about a court of thorns and roses by Sarah J Maas now this is a long awaited and long requested review on my channel you guys have been very curious about my thoughts in this book ever since I read throne of glass which was actually the first ever review I did on this channel and so I finally got around to reading this book and I didn't like it so we're gonna be talking about that today and we're gonna be doing this in the usual fashion which is by splitting it up into a short non-spoiler review and then a longer more in-depth review where I really discuss my kind of thoughts and feelings on all of the things in this so let's just dive right in this book is a Beauty and the Beast retelling following a human named Farrah who lives in a world that is divided between humans and faeries I actually didn't know that this was a Beauty and the Beast retelling before I read the book nor did I figure it out while I was reading the book but I guess in hindsight it kind of makes sense and I'm gonna talk about my thoughts and feelings later on in the review so one day Farrah discovers a massive wolf in the forest while she's hunting and she suspects that it might be a fairy who has slipped past the border wall and his human territory but she doesn't know for sure and she ends up killing it and skinning it to sell its fur in the market it does in fact turn out to be a fairy and another fairy comes from prey thean the land of the fairies and he basically claims her life for the life of his friend and takes her to the land of prey thean and that is all you get to know for now so as I said I did not like this book guys I thought that the pacing of it and the plot in general was a bit of a nightmare the structure of it didn't really work it felt like 2/3 of the book was filler and build up an exposition and only about a third of it was actual plot and story which made the last part of the book feel way too rushed to be explored properly on top of that there are just many aspects of the plot that I didn't feel made sense or we're just really frustrating and good Lord speaking of frustrating the protagonist in this book fara is one of the most frustrating protagonists I have read in a very very long time she rarely acts like a human being would act in any given situation and on top of that she just has so little personality that despite spending over 400 pages in her head I really don't know who she is she really irritated me but I'm gonna get more into the reasons behind that in the spoilers section so moving on from that the other characters I just felt the vast majority of them were fairly weak though there were two that I really enjoyed which I will also discuss in the spoilers section but overall I just felt that there wasn't enough character development in general nor did I feel like the characters were fleshed out enough or three-dimensional enough to create a vivid and interesting story the actual words and writing of it I felt was pretty weak as well a lot of the descriptions were very wordy without saying a lot and there was a lot of times where the description itself would be very weird and like did not have the intended effect I don't think overall I just felt that there were way too many words for what was being said the world-building in this book was not the worst offender by any stretch it's definitely not a heavy world-building kind of book but I think that's fine for what it is it's clearly a romantic fantasy and for that kind of thing I don't think they're necessarily needs to be talking level world-building it's the bare minimum of what it needs to be which i think is fine but I just think that the world building could have been communicated better I thought that a lot of the exposition and building of the world happened through these really long info dumps which I will also discuss later I just didn't feel like it was communicated in a way that was interesting or engaging so basically I would not recommend this book but with that out of the way let's get into a spoiler section where I can really dive into my feelings and thoughts and the nitty-gritty of why I really really really did not like this book okay so the structure of this book is very bizarre and I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's trying to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling but I just don't think it's a very successful beauty in these you're telling and therefore I think that the plot really lagged because of the structure of it the love story and Beauty and the Beast is integral to the story it is the heart of the story and despite spending so many pages of this book dedicated to building the relationship between favor and tamilyn I just didn't buy it I'll get more into that in a second so the first two-thirds of this book ends up being mostly establisher and in this we discover that figures home life is not so good she basically has a terrible life where she is forced to hunt for the survival of her family but they're all really mean like her sisters are super mean and exclusionary to her her father is kind of absent but just does not care to provide for his children and overall none of them were really appreciative of all that she does she basically is the reason that they're alive so after she kills and skins a fairy another fairy new Timlin comes to her house and basically says that because of the treaty that the humans made with the fairies he has two options he can either kill her or she can go with him to his lavish estate in Brighton where she will never have to hunt again and she can live out the rest of her days in peace and prosperity being waited on by other fairies and where she can pursue her passions which is painting for the rest of her life in a turtle spring it sounds sounds awful doesn't it wonder which one she chose obviously that so she does with Timlin to pray thean to his beautiful manor and despite none of the fairies in the estate showing any aggression to her after the initial like I could kill you or you could come with me she spends the better part of like a hundred pages just be like oh my god no I need to get back to my family because I made a promise to my mom on her deathbed even though she hates her mom as well because her mom was also a garbage person oh yes now I made a promise to my mom on her deathbed that I will always look out for my family so she wants to go back to the human world for reasons even though Tamlyn has already said that he's looking after her family so you know she doesn't have to worry about that her her debt has been paid her promise has been fulfilled she's basically doing more harm than good if she goes back after he says that a couple times she's still like oh no I must go back to my home where I live my horrible crappy life that was an extremely frustrating segment of the book cuz we all know that she's gonna end up staying in pray thean like we all know that this is a romantic fantasy like there is just not enough good reasons for her to want to go home and so it just feels like annoying frustrating filler and like trying to make a problem out of nothing so in the last third of the book we discover that all of the contrived and frustrating plot points are all actually a ruse designed by Tamblyn because he was under a curse by an evil fairy named emer antha who's trying to take control over price Ian the amount of ridiculous details and nitpicky things in this curse though are absolutely ridiculous and you can tell it only because the author is trying to make it more beauty in the beast like like for example Tamlyn for the entirety of the book has a mask on his face but only covering his eyes because I guess that's hiding how hot he is even though we're well aware of how high he is by his gorgeous body and defined jaw and piercing emerald eyes and sandy blond hair that is described numerous times throughout so I'm not really sure what the mask is trying to do but um but also just the amount of really specific details of what needs to happen in order for the curse to be broken is absolutely ridiculous and the reasoning behind the curse is also it's less ridiculous but it's just all so so much exposition that could have been simplified by a lot all of this is explained via ridiculous amounts of expositional dialogue that is just so dull that was the part of the world's building that drove me absolutely nuts she then goes to confront this lady and declare her love for Timlin in the mountain where this lady resides and ends up making a deal with her which sidebar and that for later as well but she makes this deal and basically she has to complete three trials to prove that she's worthy of tamlin's affection I guess or she could just answer a ridiculously simple riddle and not have to do any of the trials but she it's the easiest road all ever and she just does not figure it out so she does all of the trials and then figures it out after the trials because plot and because this is only a third of the book it is so rushed and the trials really suffer because of that I would say that the first trial is really the only trial that didn't feel rushed to me and it's the only one that I actually kind of enjoyed the trials in general were also just kind of dumb and I don't really get how they pertained to what the story was trying to communicate or the large themes of the story I guess because I'm not really sure what the story was trying to communicate but regardless the trials just felt kind of random and didn't really seem to further any of the themes that were a part of the story I found this to be especially true in the second trial in which favor has to answer another riddle that's right the author couldn't have come up with another idea for a trial so she has to answer another riddle before a bunch of spikes crashed onto her and Lucien so she basically just has to pull the lever with the correct answer and this to me is where a lot of it really fell apart and that is for a multitude of reasons so firstly it completely undermines amaranthus character as this evil mastermind because as far as I'm aware she never knew that Farrah was illiterate so this task was simply another riddle which again just does not seem like something that an evil mastermind would develop to test or torture a human but the second and more important issue with this trial is that favor had made a deal with another fairy named Reese and to heal her arm after the first trial and he basically leaves her with a tattoo after they make a deal and Farrah discovers during this trial that she can communicate with Reese and via her tattoo and basically she cheats she cheats to win this trial because she's illiterate and can't read it the riddle she basically hovers her hand over the levers and whichever one she doesn't feel pain you know holding it over that's the one that she posed because Reese and obviously knows the riddle and because he's literate and the only one with half a brain so I'm not really sure what this is trying to communicate about Farrah's character nor am I sure as to like what the purpose of it was but it just made Farah extra unlikable to me and further convinced me that Reese and is the only character in this book who has the basest level of intelligence so to finish off this plot section I'd like to talk about the curse and in my opinion it doesn't work there are so many things that I found to be annoying and illogical before we discover that it is all of a curse that made the first two-thirds of this book really unenjoyable to read that is not what you want out of a reader's experience so here are just a few things that bothered me before we discover the curse so first off why the heck would you let someone who just murdered and skinned your friend live let alone invite them to your mansion to live out the rest of their days in peace and prosperity that made no sense to me and bothered me throughout so much of the novel it just it was a really shaky foundation for the book to be built upon and on top of that besides Ellucian no one's seems to care that she killed and skinned a fairy Lucian is the only one who seems hurt and upset by his friend dying and even Lucian forgives her far too easily this is Hannibal Lecter levels of creepy and awful I'm just saying it just made all of the characters seem really shallow and unbelievable none of them seemed to care or grieve for their lost friend who again was murdered and skinned which just bothered me so much there's also no goal that her heroine is trying to achieve but for the first two-thirds of this book after she's brought to Prai thean especially after she no longer wants to go home so basically it's just meandering filler as she lounges about his estate and paints and that is not the base of an engaging story it's so dull post finding out about the curse there are also a ton of things that don't make sense for example why if they're trying to make her fall in love with Tamlyn it's he coming to her house and basically threatening to kill her that is not a good first impression to build a relationship off of I don't understand why Tim lemons the one getting her when it could have been Lucien or someone else so that she has a bad impression of them and Hamlin could have a good first impression it just felt really counterproductive another thing why does Lucien hesitate to save her after she captures this serial from the Naga if she is the only one who can break the curse then why is he hesitating to save her that made no sense and you know if you think about it why would he put her in danger by giving her the information to capture the serial if that's also hella dangerous I don't understand why he would give her that information so that she could do that if again she's the only one that can break this curse they're running out of time and a lot of his friends have sacrificed their lives so that this can happen it just makes no sense moving on from that why do they send her back to the human world when they still have several days left when she is so close to saying I love you because if she does it then he can protect her it's it's been made clear by the end of the book that the moment the curse is broken he can kill her when he gets his powers back he can kill him or antha so why is he sending her back to the human world when he could so easily protect her if she just said I love you which she's about to do and it's become very obvious from their relations that she is well on her way to getting to that point and seeing those words I don't understand because like also she's gonna be much safer if you do end up breaking the curse and defeating a Maratha then if you send her to the human world where amaranth ax is gonna come and conquer it cuz that's her whole endgame is she wants to conquer the human world so why are you sending her back to the human world where she's defenseless if you could just protect her from amaranth ax if she breaks the curse like it seems like a pretty good gamble to me to try to do that okay so let's just talk a little bit more about Beauty and the Beast so as I mentioned earlier I had no idea before I bought this book that it was a Beauty and the Beast retelling and nor did I figure it out while I was reading it which either indicates that I'm not the most intelligent or which is what I'm leaning towards because I don't like that first option it was not well executed in this and I'm gonna I'm gonna provide some support to my theory that it's the second one so Beauty and the Beast explores you know important themes like beauty is what's on the inside not what's on the outside let's just look at how they explored that in this text so Farah who is our Belle ah is described as being absolutely gorgeous on the outside but is super insecure for no reason which I absolutely hate and is such an issue nya even going so far as to say her cheekbones are just there's just too sharp my cheekbones are just too sharp she's not these strong intelligent beauty that we got for many versions of the story and instead she's so dumb and she also just refuses to see the inner beauty of Tamlyn until it's shoved so far down our throats though were almost okay with the rapey bits but don't worry we're not okay with those she seems to be though which is awful but let's look a little bit more at CamLAN he is our beast and yet he is described as being absolutely gorgeous but let's move on to the writing which I hated there was such an excessive use of dashes and her descriptions were so wordy and she also uses the same descriptions a lot like for example I didn't count which I wish I had but the amount of times that she said a shiver spider walked down my spine I could cry or a feeling of pain spider walked down on my arm like it was just a ridiculous amount of spider walking down body parts and it drove me nuts she also describes things with just an excessive amount of adjectives for example here is the first paragraph of page 4 mesmerizing the lethal gentle beauty of the snow I'd soon have to return to the muddy frozen roads of the village to the cramped heat of our cottage some small fragmented part of me recalled at the thought it's like she says everything twice to make it more potent I guess or more descriptive but it just makes it feel very stilted and stuttery there are also a few quotes that I posted on Twitter one of which I just found to be hilarious which I'm gonna read to you where it's just like this description is clearly not giving the intended effect like it was just like the words chosen were the wrong words like for example this was just supposed to be a romantic scene he pulled me onto his lap holding me tightly against him as his lips parted mine I became aware of every pore in my body when his tongue entered my mouth honey that is not cute okay so I'm not really gonna go in-depth into the world building of this book because as I mentioned I thought it was fine it wasn't great we didn't get to know a lot about the world but it was enough to you know service the plot and keep things going so I didn't have a huge issue with it I just wish that it had been communicated better as I mentioned there were some really heavy info dumps and there were three that were really noticeable to me in particular and I think that makes up the bulk of the exposition and world building in this story so the first one is what I like to call the expositional inner monologue and to me this is the least offensive it was the other two that really drove me nuts so the second one that I noticed was when she is in tamlin's library and she discovers a mural of prey thean that has a bunch of different kind of images that tell the history of prey thean this goes on forever and is not described in a way that is interesting nor is it described in a way that is clear I could not see this mural in my head and it just felt like a really cheap way to try to get this information to the reader the worst offender by far is when Farrah comes back to prey thean and discovers that Tamlyn has been taken to the lair of amaranth ax and his estate has been ransacked and she runs into alice who was really the only servant person who we get to know in this novel and basically Alice gives her 13 pages of expositional dialogue but let's move on to my favorite part of all my reviews the characters as I mentioned earlier I liked two of them but my favorite of all of them would definitely have to be Lucian I thought his character was one of the most well-rounded and developed with a very interesting backstory that shows us a little bit more of the world and culture of prey thean and kind of the harshness of it like I love that we get to see more of the world through his past and history III genuinely enjoy that and I also think that he's probably the least offensive in nicest character in this book which is funny because he has this really hard kind of sarcastic exterior that he puts on and portrays to the world but I think deep down from his actions we see that he's actually a pretty good guy bonus for him also was he was as uncomfortable with the favorite Tamlyn courtship as I was and he would say those things out loud and I just appreciated those feelings being acknowledged the next character that I liked was Reese and and I just felt a wave of all of you just cringing let me be clear I do not ship him and favor together because he is not a good guy he is very abusive and that is very problematic and a huge issue them as a couple so I do not ship that in the slightest but that being said I do think he's one of the more interesting and more intelligent characters in this book which is a breath of fresh air after all of the other characters he seemed to be the only character who was playing chess everyone else was just kind of winging it but he seemed to be the only one who was in any control at any given moment and that made me like him and as a villain he was much scarier and much more interesting than amaranth ax what I like about him is that in this book we don't really know where his head is at we never know his true motivations and that makes him a lot scarier than amaranth the one major thing that bothered me about Rice and besides the budding relationship with him and Farrah was the whole bringing Farrah as an escort thing that bothered me so much because it completely undermined all of the things that I liked about him so Reese and basically dresses Farrah up super scantily and paints her body in black swirly paint so that he can see who touches her and then he drugs her and then guess her to perform lap dances and various other things while she's drugged so that's awesome but this is there's just no good reason for this basically the reason that you the story is that he wants to make Tamlyn mad enough to kill amaranth ax when he gets his powers back but like I'm pretty sure he's already pretty mad at amaranth alike I'm pretty sure he doesn't need this extra thing because you know she cursed him for 50 years she basically forced him to sacrifice a bunch of members of his court which he did not seem to be too upset about but we'll get to that in a second on top of that when he does end up falling in love with Farah she is now competing in three trials designed by amaranth ax to Porcher her and probably kill her cuz you know amaranth is not like ooh let's make these just for fun she wants favorite to die so I'm pretty sure Tamlyn already has quite a few reasons to be upset at amaranth ax so I don't understand why Reis and thinks it's a good idea to make Timlin mad at him as well like he was kind of off the hook he is just as much under amaranthus thumb as Tamlyn is but this is across the line this is playing with tamblyn's girl and amaranth ax isn't ordering it so really he's just making Tamlyn mad at him for no reason so despite reefs and seeming to have a brain for some of the things this just undermined all of it which made me really upset because I kind of liked him he was kind of intimidated it's fine but yeah speaking of dumb things let's chat about amaranth ax she is not a good villain like before we meet her she's built up to be this really scary like we know we don't even know her name she's like Voldemort everyone just calls her she she's made up to be this master manipulator who has taken prey thean from all of the High Lords through manipulation and trickery only an intimidation like she has taken power not through war at all but just with her mind but then we meet her and I'm like how she's so dumb like she ends up being this cartoon villain and she makes this deal with Farrah for no reason like Farrah comes waltzing into her court and she can stood that was dumb of you prepare to die like that seems like a reasonable thing for amaranthus do especially knowing her history but instead she cuts this deal with Farrah to win her and Tamlyn and the entire spring courts freedom which basically a Maratha should know will result in her death because Tamlyn will come after her so obviously if she is this mastermind she knows that this is the conclusion and that favor can't win and yet she designs these three stupid trials which don't really seem to have a thematic point and on top of that she gives Farah the easiest riddle in the history of riddles as an out she says I will immediately cuz she was doing a whole play on words thing where she was gonna basically make a deal with Farah and she would free them after they had died if they were one so it would have been moved to anyway but in the deal with Farah with the riddle she promises that if she answers the riddle she will release them immediately so why is she building in this easy out for Farah if she is this master manipulator and like I don't know why she has to do with trials anyway like is she trying to punish favor because it seems like torture would accomplish that like I don't know why she wants favorite to prove that she is good enough for Tamlyn I just I don't understand how any of it's relevant to her master plans or why she's doing any of it which is not great for a villain and then on top of that she's not even the formidable fighter that we've heard that she is because Tamlyn once he is freed from the curse kills her immediately he just goes that he like malls her and the other thing is it seems like he would have been able to do it without the curse breaking anyway because he literally just turns into his wolf form and like malls her it's not like he was doing something that was like out of the realm of possibility before like he could have done that earlier so I don't get it so speaking of her boy Tamlyn good lord he is so boring he is the most generic brand Wonderbread version of a male love interest I have ever seen like he has no personality really besides being overbearing and selectively protective I don't feel like I know him at all which is insane because we spent 2/3 of this book focusing on his and Farrah's romance and connection and building them up to hinge the whole story on he's also got this really like creepy overprotective and controlling undertones to all of his actions that really doesn't lend itself to him being an attractive love interest that I can ship like the Kalin my stuff is so wrong it's so rapey and I don't care if she ends up being okay with it the next day it's not okay he basically pins her to a wall against her will and she repeatedly says both verbally and with her actions no please let me go he still pins her and then marks her by biting her neck that's so wrong I don't care how you explained it away or how romantic you portray it I cannot get behind that okay but like what are tamlin's interests I know he used to be in a war Bend and used to do dirty poetry but besides that he really doesn't seem to have any hobbies or anything to his personality anything to make him interesting or you know a character so I'm not really sure what else I can say about Tamlyn because there really isn't much to say and last but not least it's time to talk about our leading lady favorite is so dumb she is constantly told by all these people who have more experience than her in this world that she should not do things and then she acknowledges that she should not do these things and then she does them anyway it's like she has a death wish it's so frustrating because she knows she shouldn't everyone else no she shouldn't and she does it anyway to dire consequences and ends up usually hurting herself and others it's extremely selfish and it serves no purpose and drove me insane an example of this is when she goes and catches the serial which Tamlyn told her not to do and Lucien warns that she should not do it because it's dangerous and she does it anyways she also does everything that Alice tells her not to do when she goes into the mountain which is annoying and basically just takes a device from no one for no reason despite acknowledging that it's probably good advice like I cannot stand being inside the head of someone who is so opposed to common sense it's ridiculous fare is also kind of a jerk she grew up in poverty and yet she is totally ok with being waited on by a bunch of staff and servants when she goes to tamlin's estate like you'd think that because she grew up with nothing she'd have more in common with the people that are serving her and be uncomfortable with it than fitting in with the High Lords one would think that those would be the people that she tried to converse with and befriend and you can argue that she kind of did that with Alice but it was so surface level that it does really count and she does that with literally none of the other staff in the entire book I don't know also the fairy world never really seems to faze her despite growing up her entire life being told that it's super dangerous and then being proven on several accounts that it is super dangerous one would think that this would be super alien to her and she would require some time to adjust from you know the human world to something entirely different so it's really strange to me that this never really seems to happen she seems to be pretty well-adjusted pretty quickly except for the fact that she wants to go home to look after her family for no reason well let's look at the painting thing because it seems to be her only interest and also the only thing that kind of constitutes her personality but like it doesn't really say much about her because the art in this book is described in a way that is so nonspecific it says absolutely nothing about her because we have no understanding about what painting looks like and what art styles there are in this world I'm gonna throw up a few paintings on the screen right now these are all paintings by different artists you can just let me know if they look and feel the same to you because all we ever get in the book is this is a painting with colors that says descriptive as it gets is it detailed is it hyper realistic is it abstract is there texture can we see the brushstrokes is it sharp or softer what are the stylistic differences between what she's been exposed to in the human world versus the styles of the fairy paintings I am an art nerd so I get that this wouldn't bother everyone but at the same time it's just such a missed opportunity I'd also just like to point out that she doesn't really have an arc she is a dumb murderer at the start of the book and she is a dumb murderer at the end of the book and I think that's all I really need to say also though her relationship with Tamlyn felt so insta lovey they have nothing in common as far as I can tell despite feeling Vic they had pressure put on them by external forces Tamlyn with the curse her with her family that is the only bonding point which like her circumstances have changed so she's just like I can empathize with that I can sympathize but like it's not like she's living that anymore but like she doesn't seem to emphasize that much also just because like she doesn't really ask about how Hamelin is doing during all of this dealing with all of this stuff he's clearly under a lot of pressure and she's not asking about it she's just ignoring it which is not what a good partner in a relationship would do just saying but on top of that they never really seemed to have like milestones where they bond they never seem to have that much romantic tension or any kind of spark whatsoever but also like the one moment where I remember them like that's the moment that they kind of bond and like you know kind of get together a little bit I feel like it's very indicative of who they are and they kind of deserve each other because that moment is when fair is dumb and goes and hunts the serial and then gets chased by the Nagas and ends up killing a bunch of them and then Tamlyn goes and kills the other ones and then he clasps her bloody hand in his bloody hand and like if I remember correctly like brushes his against her face or lips or something like mm-hmm cute you seriously desert each other alright guys that is all I have for you today I hope you enjoyed this video I think that's all I kind of have to say about a court of thorns and roses I don't think I'm going to be carrying on with any of Sara J masses work I just don't like the way that she develops characters or worlds or plots I or just her writing in general so I think we're just gonna leave it at this and call it a day so thank you again for watching if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel and I would love to hear your thoughts about this book if you agree with me or if you disagree I would still like to hear that regardless let me know in the comment section down below thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time

Channel: Jordan Harvey

Views: 156,176

Rating: 4.4963274 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, jordan, harvey, jordan harvey, acotar review, acotar, a court of thorns and roses, a court of thorns and roses (acotar) review \& rant, a court of thorns and roses review \& rant, booktube, book review, rant review, sarah j maas, acotar rant review, acotar sarah j maas, booktuber

Id: 1OviE4snA8Y

Length: 36min 51sec (2211 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 24 2018