Alright, buckle in for my longest review yet. I waited to write/post my thoughts on all of the books in this series until I was caught up & that day has come. 

2.5 stars

Ok look, this is not a good book. 

Hate me if you want, but I said what I said. 

HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean I completely disliked reading it or this series. I love a series, love getting to know characters and living in their world with them. So, while it’s not a good book or well written or compelling or original, it IS readable. 

Now, let’s review. Here’s my not-so-quick synopsis of this story:

First off this is literally just Beauty and the Beast if Belle couldn’t read, and her dad sucked and she had evil stepsisters, and instead of punishment she received a significantly better life and if the Beast wasn’t ugly (just a dick) and if he did nothing to earn her love at all. Oh, and throw an evil queen in there because…who knows why, but she’s here. 

Feyre is just a normal girl who just wants to live with her shitty dad and paint pictures (because she painted one time and that’s the dream) but is instead stuck living with her shitty dad AND shitty sisters. No one else in the house does literally anything at all to help them survive so it’s all on Feyre to provide food, money, emotional support, etc. Oh, and she sometimes gets it on with a random Towny even though they’ll never be together (get it girl, you deserve one half decent thing in your shitty life). 

On a fateful hunting trip, Feyre shoots a wolf and ends up trading its pelt for money her sisters immediately waste. But, what’s this? The wolf wasn’t a wolf at all but a Fae/Faerie in disguise?!? And now a bigger, meaner Fae wants revenge? A life for a life?!? Shit our main character is doomed! 

Nah, she’s just forced to go live in a literal palace with servants and food and nice clothes. Sure, the only other people she sees are the mean Fae and his snarky friend, but it’s better than simultaneously freezing & starving to death. Plus, the mean Fae is probably hot (hard to tell because he is cursed to wear a masquerade mask 24/7) and magically made her family not poor or starving anymore. 

For some reason, our protagonist thinks this is all terrible and really wants to get back to her shitty family – cue a lot of decisions that make no sense at all. Bad decision follows bad decision, culminating in Feyre being told SO MANY TIMES that a whole bunch of faeries are coming over for a big ritual at which she will absolutely be killed (or worse) and she should under NO CIRCUMSTANCES leave her room tonight. So of course, this bitch just waltzes on into the festival. 
As she walks herself right into a real bad situation (multiple males – not men, only males (kill me) – with very bad intentions), a dark figure saves the day by pretending to know her. Our shadow daddy has arrived! But wait, he is also a dick? Hmmm. 

Truly I don’t remember what happened next because it was really boring. Probably more bad decisions, oh and being mad horny for Beast even though he hasn’t done a single thing to earn any affection, let alone lust from her. 

Eventually she somehow gets wrapped up with the Evil Queen who has been tormenting the Faerie world for 50 years. The queen kidnaps the Beast and it’s up to our dumb little human (who has at some point decided she’s in love with him????) to save the day. 

Feyre is unable to solve the world’s easiest riddle and instead must complete three challenges. She is comforted between these challenges by her snarky friend from the palace and confusingly by the shadow daddy, going so far as to make a deal with him just to get out of this mess and back to the Fae she inexplicably loves. 

The one-time Feyre and the Beast finally get to be alone together after MONTHS of torture, they don’t speak, they don’t profess their love, they don’t cry in each other’s arms – they just hardcore make out. At a party. Where they will absolutely be fucking destroyed if they’re caught. So, shadow daddy catches them and makes out with her too – yay, the day is saved! 

Eventually the last test comes along, and Feyre must kill some people to save the Beast – except oh no! She must kill the Beast to save him! Good thing she randomly figures out (based on really no context) that he has a stone heart. So, stab away, he ain’t dying. Also, at some point during this she finally solves the stupid riddle from before – the answer is love (BARF). 

Furious that she’s been thwarted, the Evil Queen kills Feyre (possibly the only exciting part of the book) but our Shadow Daddy and the Beast rally all of their other powerful friends and they bring her back to life! Yay! Except now she’s a Fae?!? And she has to hold up her end of the bargain with Shadow Daddy now that she’s still alive. 

The End. 

 My thoughts: 

The writing in this book is so inconsistent and nonsensical that I wanted to pull my hair out sometimes. Not only are the characters’ actions inconsistent from chapter to chapter, but even physical descriptions change randomly. 

I also really struggled with every motivation the characters had. Feyre is desperate to get back to and save her family despite that facts that (a) they have done absolutely nothing but treat her like absolute garbage for years, (b) Tampon made them all think she’s a-ok and also vastly improved their lives as a result, and (c) she’s living a life of luxury with zero cares in the world. There is no reason for this NINETEEN YEAR OLD (oh yeah, she’s only 19 and everyone else in this book is like 570) to want to go back to her old terrible life. None. Especially considering that her “sense of duty” is based off a promise she made to her dying mother when she was EIGHT years old because even facing death her mom was like “hmm my family sucks, gotta put all the responsibility on this 8 year old”. 

There’s also no motivation for her to have affection, lust, or love for Tampon. He’s at best neutral to her in his terrible attempts at being nice, and at worst basically tells her he would have raped her if she had stuck around at the festival much longer. Her response to this? Swoon <3. So gross. The love story is 100% unearned and completely forced. We see so little interaction between Feyre and Tamlin on the page that I really struggle to understand why anyone was smitten with this love story. 

I could probably write an entire essay about how much the riddle pissed me off. First off, why on earth would Amarantha offer it as an option? She is clearly the queen bitch who only plays games she knows she will win, so offering to give up everything if Feyre solves a single riddle & giving her months to figure it out? Make it make sense. Especially because the riddle is truly so glaringly obvious that I immediately thought that the obvious answer must be a fake-out and the real answer is more complicated! But no, not true. It’s just a big old obvious cliché. The only one of the three trials that was interesting was the Wyrm. I understand why the other two exist (to show Rhys helping her and to show that she figured out the curse) but they were pointless on the page.
Overall, I’m glad that people had warned me that this is not the best book of the series and that it’s kind of just a weird set-up and character introduction. Because let me tell you, if I hadn’t promised friends to read this series I absolutely would not have read past this one. 

If you don’t think about it too hard, or pay attention to any details, or like books with likable characters then this is a fine book. It’s an interesting world that’s been built and there’s a little mystery here and there to draw you in. But overall it’s just not a good story, not well written, and just kind of a let down book with lots of eye roll moments.