Feyre & Rhysand

When poised with the question, “What is your favourite story?” I find it so very hard to choose. One story does stand out recently as a favourite of mine though. The love story of Feyre and Rhysand; A Court of Thorns and Roses. It’s one of those “Teen Fantasy” that should actually be marketted to adults kind of stories. Your typical good girl ends up in a big mess, falls for the bad guy and they don’t realize it but they were destined to be together, kind of cheesy love stories. Just through in a lot of violence, bloodshed, wars, and fantasy storytelling, and you’ve got the perfect story for me!

Now this sounds kind of harsh, but I can’t do the plain love story. I get bored when good girl meets bad boy, falls in love and they live happily ever after. I want some characters to die off. I want the bad guy to win. Especially when he is described and visualized as well as Rhys is, if you know what I mean. “Meet your next book boyfriend” as I have seen him described.

Why this story?

What does this story have that made me fall so in love with it? Sarah J. Maas is a fantastic visual writer. I feel like I am in the story with the characters. My husband thought I was crazy as I cried with them and completely lost myself in the story as I was reading the book. It adheres to so many of the 22 Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar. The characters are thrown into situations that seem to have nothing to do with their strengths. Feyre is a mortal human who finds herself in the Fae realm where she is vulnerable to everything. Absolutely every kind of creature in the realm is dangerous to her, and most want to eat her.

Without spoiling the story for you, (because that is just the worst!) she ends up adapting and fitting right in. She escapes the toxic relationship she is initially in, and finds her heart mate, but it is not all fun and games and sweet nothings. He is the mortal enemy of most Fae in the realm; the bad guy. The characters which continued to develop over the series, and the twisting plot lines, sucked me right into the story.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

This whole series is a story of the stakes being stacked against Feyre. They are stacked even further against her and Rhys making it as a couple. It takes so long for them to find each other and then build up their relationship and trust to a level that allows them to be together, that it seems the whole world starts falling apart around them.

From the beginning when Feyre is introduced as the oldest child of a family of 3 sisters, whose mother had died years ago, living in poverty, to her being brought to the Fae lands because she had killed a faerie without provocation (even though he appeared as a wolf to her), she is the underdog. She is then basically held captive by Tamelin, and nearly marries him, while knowing that something wasn’t right. This is one of the first times that Rhys swoops in to save her, while readers are still led to believe that he is the bad guy in the plot line.

Is there ever a happily ever after?

Even when we start to think that the wars and things are settling down, there is still turmoil for Feyre. Near the end of the series it is turmoil with her sisters, and I really enjoyed that the books switched gears and moved to Nesta being the main character instead of Feyre.

All in all, I highly recommend the Court of Thorns and Roses series to any avid fantasy-love story readers. Fastastic story to keep pulling you in over and over again. There is also such a following that there are playlists on Spotify that fans have created to go along with the moods/themes of the books and relationships within those books. Such a great series!