Review | A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas

Title : A Court of Wings and Ruin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Childrens Books

Release Date : May 2nd 2017

Genres : Fantasy
Pages : 699

Rating : ★★☆☆☆

A nightmare, I’d told Tamlin. I was the nightmare.
Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin’s maneuverings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit—and one slip may spell doom not only for Feyre, but for her world as well. As war bears down upon them all, Feyre must decide who to trust amongst the dazzling and lethal High Lords—and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

I have a love/hate relationship with this serie. The first book was okay, the second was great and now we have this one, a mix between them. I liked where the story was going, how my beloved characters are growing (SJM really has a talent for character development) but at the same time I expected so much more. The more I think about it the more issues I have with it.

First and foremost : Feyre's – and only – perspective. I like Feyre in general but in this book, I didn't feel at the heart of the action. It felt more like I was reading from a side character's pov than a MC's. There are some instances where we can witness an event from another character's eyes but that's all we do. Witness. We don't know what they feel, we dont know what's going on in their head, what they're thinking and why they act this way. We witness these events through their eyes but with Feyre's understanding of them.

Then, the repetitions. Feyre is Rhysand's equal and that's sweet, I loved the emphasis of this idea in ACOMAF but I think we got it the first ten times it was said. 

I used to love Rhysand. He was my fictional crush for a while but now ? Not so much. I was tired of how SJM kept telling he was awesome because he gave Feyre choices. It's not supposed to be awesome. It's supposed to be normal.
I felt like she was trying to manipulate me into thinking he's the best male interest ever but it did the opposite effect. Also, we still don't know why Rhysand is the most powerful of the High Lords. Is there even a real reason, or is it just because he's the male interest ?

Then, there are the – cringy and useless – sex scenes. Those scenes didn't serve any purposes since Feysand are already happily in love. There isn't the sexual tension we could find in ACOMAF or the realization of something afterwards which is normal since their relationship is accomplished.

There's also the « vulgar gesture » every character was doing at some point. I think I read it at least 15 times. It was nice at first, it shows the familiarity between the characters after all but I didn't like how similar they were becoming. I like when everyone's personality is clearly distinct but at some point I found myself rereading the same sentence to understand who did it this time. 

Now let's talk about Tamlin. A lot of people said that in this book he redeemed himself. Well, I think we've read something different. He is so petty. He disrespects Feyre over and over and for one action, he magically redeemed himself ? Seriously ?

I didn't see any change in him. He went from being a jerk to being a jerk with a conscience. We don't get any proof that he's going to treat women differently now, it's not like they had an open discussion about it. For all we know he's just thinking "okay she's never going to be mine, let's try to control someone else". Don't tell me he redeemed himself.

The only characters that stood out in my opinion are Nesta and Azriel. Their perspectives would have been so much more enlightning than Feyre's.

Nesta is such a complicated character and I loved every side of her. She appears cold and unaccessible and slowly shows more of her. Everytime she smiled or agreed on something felt like a victory. There are some cute scenes with her and Cassian but once again I felt frustrated. I wanted to see how they were going to become closer. I wanted to see how Cassian was going to get past Nesta's walls but all we get to see are random scenes that lead to an unbreakable bond. How did that happen ? I love romances in book and I was so excited to see theirs but it felt short. 

And then there is the quiet Azriel who made my heart ache for him. Everyone is on Team Mor and I can understand but I feel like I'm the only one who thinks this whole situation is unfair to Azriel. Not because of the huge revelation but because of how it was handled.

Overall, even though I had lots of issues with ACOWAR, SJM's books remain one of my guilty pleasures. It wasn't what I hoped for and some parts left me frustrated but hopefully now that this story is complete the next book will be better.