A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J Maas

"But you didn't like the first one! Why did you read this one!"
"To see if it got better."
"...and did it?"
"NO."

So in the first book Feyre meets Tamlin, the High Lord of the Spring Court of the faeries, falls in love with him, and fights the evil Queen of the faeries to save him. She dies in the attempt and is resurrected as the strongest, most badass faery ever, but is understandably all fucked up from the terrible things she had to do.

Then suddenly in book 2, Tamlin is abusive and won't listen to her, has a secret dark past of evil running through his family, and is willing to collaborate with the evil faeries he tried to die to stop in book one. Luckily for our heroine, she had a dark and sexy maybe-evil guy in book one who loved her but whom she hated. And now he turns out to be all sad backstory and secret goodness inside, and ACTUALLY her true love after all.

Nonsense. Just hilarious nonsense.

I really like the idea of a YA novel where the heroine has a good and boring boyfriend and a sexy semi-evil boyfriend, and she chooses the semi-evil one. I was all about Elena and Damon on the Vampire Diaries. But the retconning this book attempts is hilarious. I actually liked Rhys okay, but he was a sexually harassing creep in book 1, which no amount of "but he's SAD inside!" could make me forget.

About 40% of the book is Feyre moping that she's twisted and broken inside, while trying on endless beautiful dresses. Another 40% is backstory of characters we've just met who weren't in book 1 but are now the heroes of the series which... is an interesting way to do things. The last 20% is plot, but just barely. A lot of the book is macguffin quests to do stuff that doesn't ultimately matter. The ending was particularly bizarre. It's been 1st person pov from one character for 2 books and then suddenly it isn't. There's also a switcheroo that doesn't particularly work.

I don't know. It's not TERRIBLE. I get the appeal of throwing out Tamlin and subbing in Rhys as the romantic lead. The problem is that I'm not convinced anything from book 1 supports that, and that I kind of don't like Feyre enough to care who she ends up with. She's always moping and shouting at people, and her adorable sass which wins everyone over, is mostly just not that sassy.

Will I read the 3rd book just to shout about it? Signs point to yes, as long as my library has it.

Grade: C
#81 in 2016