2.5 stars

I read this because everyone seems obsessed with it. Feyre is so freaking annoying. Maas wrote her in a way where she was an “I’m not like other girls” girl to an extent where I was ready to just give up. But people told me to keep going, that the second half is better. So I pushed onward. Awful. The amount of “a human could NEVER do this” moments where she did indeed do it were infuriating… she had like zero skills of her own admittance and somehow lucks into survival over and over, just a very annoying character in my opinion. 

Amarantha was the stupidest villain story. The decision by Maas that she is so cunning that she convinced everyone to trust her after she was a tortuous evil bitch in the war is unrealistic. To such a point that it just felt like a mockery of a villain, it was so clear Feyre would win that Amarantha felt useless as a character and as a big bad villain. Maybe I just am being overly critical but it felt so stupid that she was supposed to be so so evil that she burned Claire alive and tortured her when she thought that was who Tamlin loved, but when Feyre actually shows up she gets all ditzy and is like “hmm I won’t burn you up I’m bored, let’s stretch this out for months” but does no kind of torture or even surveillance of Feyre in her cell to ensure she’s not getting help? Stupid. The entire plot was so so stupid. Multiple times I scoffed at just HOW stupid. 

Tamlin is also such a whiny annoying character. You steal away like 2 min with the captive love of your life under the mountain and think it’s a good idea to have sex?? You’re not going to try to give her advice on how to survive and save everyone?? Nope. Instead he bites her neck and boobs. Really helpful. 

Characters that gave me hope that maybe something interesting could happen: Nesta, Rhysand, and Lucien (occasionally Alice but she ended up being a bit of a let down). 

I’ve heard book two is mainly about Nesta so perhaps against my better judgement I’ll continue… but we’ll see.