UPDATE APRIL 17TH ADDING PARENTAL GUIDANCE AND SAFETY WARNINGS because kirkus reviews, some GR librarians and most booktubers won't tell you the truth.
This is an EROTICA BOOK, not a YA book.

I repeat: THIS BOOK IS AN EROTICA BOOK, not a YA book. Or maybe you can call it an in-between ADULT AND UPPER YA meaning . NEW ADULT BOOK, plus it has certain influence from self-published Paranormal romance ( Shay Savage's Transcendence? Anyone?) so yes this is new adult at its best.

The sex scenes are the most descriptives ever in a book marketed falsely as YA. Meaning that there's no fade to black at any description of sexual activity. Think of Transcendence, Fifty shades of grey and Archer's voice kind of level of graphicdescription

So don't think the sex scenes of A court of mist and fury are on the same level of PG "graphic sex-scenes" found in reads such like Clockwork Princess, Opal, The fault in our stars, Graceling, Breaking dawn, City of heavenly fire and other upper young adult reads. I'll repeat The sex scenes in ACOMAF are closer to Fifty shades, Transcendence and the immortal after dark series because again: NO FADE TO BLACK during the most intense, schmexy, making love moments Kirkus reviews, some GR librarians and anyone who tells you the contrary is lying.


*********PARENTAL GUIDANCE triggers ***********

AGE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS: Heroine is 20, the rest of the cast is a gazillion years old.

SEX/NUDITY 10 out 10 As I said before no fade to black during the schmexy moments, no metaphores, no sensual imagery but the straight vivid image of nudity and sex. I won't mention all the moments because there are too many, but I'll tell you where you'll find the most descriptive in the american hardcover version: You can read some of them in my updates:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1493972253

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

Pages 21, 22 

 

A  faery woman is descriptively fingered by someone different than the hero, then she has descriptive sex, then oral, descriptions of the fluids and the nudity and the action in vivid detail. 

Pages 471, 472, 473, 474. 475

 

A faery woman is fingered to orgasm by the heroe(different guy from the pages 21-22), partial nudity, but this scene takes a quite few pages and it's an erotic scene, not just a sex scenes, but the purpose seems to be to be to turn on the reader.


Pages 530, 531, 532, 533, the orgasm that shatters the mountains:

A pair of lovers heroine and hero have sex including oral, vidid description of the action, use of the word "cock"

Pages 538 and 539

Vivid descrption of oral (fellatio):P but they call it licking LOL. 

I think those are the most detailed graphic scenes. The rest of sex scenes aren't that vivid IMHO but they're still there. Anyone who wants to tell me that I'm exaggerating and that the sex-scenes aren't descriptive or that this book isn't erotica I challenge you: If you're an adult Read aloud the content of these pages to a group of underage kids and see if you don't find yourself in trouble. If you aren't, read it to your parents and see if you don't blush.

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 out of 10

Descriptions of torture to Fae people, to humans, PTSD symptons, portrayal of an abusive relationship, brief mention of gang rape, nothing graphic,
it was part of the background of one of the main characters: Descriptive action scenes, where some fae people die.


PROFANITY 10/10

Multiple penis references, the use of the word cock (BTW, you'll never find the word "cock" in Fifty shades books) multiple F bombs, sexual terms, some cursing

SUBSTANCE USE

 In this "fantasy" world there are shops and night clubs, imagine like a fantasy modern big city, so there are pubs. The MC's drink for fun and go to dance in those night clubs.

SAFETY ISSUES This is for my friends who prefer readings with no cheating no OW (other woman) and OM (other men)

This is for my friends who prefer readings with no cheating no OW (other woman) and OM (other men) As I said in page 20-21 we have a very descriptive sex scene of heroine with other man. That's because in book 1 the hero was Tamlin and he got engaged with heroine, but most readers including me were rooting for Rhysand the villain, so that scene is hard to stomach. Tamlin becomes a jerk and Feyre flees, but there's a little bit of Feyre inner thoughts thinking she is being disloyal to Tamlin when she starts to fall for Rhysand. So there's this kind of love triangle going on. We know she won't back to Tamlin but there's still this kind of doubts,
nothing super trianglish, but there. Not totally free of the triangle

Conclusion
Honest question. I'm not a supporter of censorship, but like my friend Stephanie says: If there's a PG rating for movies... why not for books? I'm not against kids reading sex. I'm against fake marketing and lack of warnings. Children's bloomsbury should have added warning of sexual content in the cover of this book, on the blurb and market it as an adult book. If kids wants to read Fifty shades of grey I'm no one to judge, they already know what they will encounter. But diving into ACOMAF not knowing that there's EROTIC scenes because a famous booktuber "forgot" to add warnings at the beginning of her non-spoiler review or because Kirkus deems the EROTIC scenes appropiate for 14 years old or because Booktopia (Australian book retailer) labels this book as appropiate for 12 YO readers is just wrong IMHO. But whatever! I still love this book.

***************PREVIOUS UPDATES AND ORIGINAL REVIEW**********************
Update: This should be easily the best New adult read of 2016. This book is New adult, not Young adult. Clearly the best YA book this year is Lady Midnight, I hope readers vote correctly so both books have a chance to get a well-deserved prize. Lady Midnight is YA and ACOMAF is NA and the best book of 2016.

Ian as Rhys!





I'll start this review with warnings and some might be a little bit spoilery, but you need to have this information to really appreciate the beauty of this book.





You might hate this book if:
* You were seriously rooting for Tamlin and Fayre.
* You don't like Rhys.
* You hate love triangles and don't get fooled or deceived by the most voted goodreads review. This is totally a love triangle as far as this book goes, but I'll explain later why I think this works.
*(view spoiler) This is Sarah J Maas, we knew she was going to do this, it was hinted all over the first book.
* You prefer plot-driven books, over character-driven books. This book is more about the evolution of the characters, the building up of the relationships and it's not for lovers of complicated plot and action scenes and adventure. This book is more about romance, backstory and relationship building. I loved that! Give me more of that. Plots are overrated. I need relationships, I need emotions.
* If you were too attached to the storylines of the first book. (view spoiler)
* If you hate long books.
* If you hate when NA books are marketed as YA. That's so common lately.

Having said all that.
We have a winner!



I'll admit that the first book wasn't stellar. It was good, but nothing special.This one, my friends? I couldn't put it down. The first part of the book for some reason didn't appeal to me. I don't know why. I was struggling through it. I think this is a book that you need to read slowly, in your bed, preferably with a furry pet and a cup of coffee near you. Its Sarah J. Maas vivid imagination and beautiful prose at her best. I think some people will find her style slow and overdescriptive, but that's the beauty of this book. You can spend days with it and you don't want it to end. The writing is very good and the story is extremely compelling.

Once I reached the middle part, wow, just wow! I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I couldn't and wouldn't stop reading.

It goes without saying that I'm a huge Rhys fan. I kept imagining Ian Somerhalder as Rhys even since the first book and I was so happy to see how relevant he became in this book.






How hot are the sex scenes? I read a lot of classic romance and New adult, so I don't think they were graphic. But that's what I prefer. I want the relationship between the couple to evolve, grow and shine before they get into bed. I thought it was good and as a new adult reader that is getting TIRED of the same storylines of new adult, I always welcome a New adult books in other genres, such as fantasy, paranormal steampunk and dystopia. I want Sarah to keep writing sex scenes, just I want a sort of warning for the younger readers? I think that's the ethical thing to do. Seriously publishers and authors: Stop trying to shove sex down the throats of young people. (sounded weird, but it's true) Give a proper warning and then we can enjoy the book better. People who like clean reads, can avoid this one at least be warned that there's sex content, and people who like sex will buy it MORE because sex sells right?. Everyone wins.

Now the love triangle. I was so pissed-off when I read Throne of glass with the switching in love interests that I could never root for Caelena, never got to know her, never got to appreciate her evolution or relate for her.

In this series, and thanks to the AMAZING transformation of Fayre, for the first time, and as much as I love RHys and I want him and Fayre together, I'm rooting for Fayre more. If she ends up alone, if she chooses Tamlin over Rhys, although I hope that's not the case, I'll be fine. I want her to be happy, no matter with whom and that's a first for my romantic, monogamist heart. I usually hate when the couple I'm rooting for doesn't end up together and that's why I hate love triangles, but here I'm not team Rhys, I'm not team Tamlin, I'm team Fayre and I hope that in the third book she gets to keep all the awesomeness she displayed on this one. She became a whole different person, strong and badass.

The ending is such a cliffhanger, but I was expecting that. Usually second books in a series are.

To wrap up my review I only have to say that this book is much better than the first one if you don't belong to any of the categories I mentioned before. Would I recommend this book? Hell yes! but take a look at my list of warnings, if you don't belong to any of the list categories you totally should give a chance to this series. This is, so far, way much better than Throne of glass. It's a whole different level.

I need more of Rhys and Fayre, it's going to be a long wait. Best book of 2016!


UPDATE APRIL 5TH 2017
Apparently the fake marketing is because the publishing company doesn't want the label New adult attached to this book.
Link to reviewers that have mentioned that this book is New adult or erotica for children, I'm including positive and negative reviews

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

So, a lot of top reviewers have noticed that this is a new adult book, so there's no point denying the obvious.

 

 

 

If people find those too weird, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel or Earth Girl by Janet Edwards."

But she was not wrong. My reading tastes are... dissimilar to most bloggers, it seems.

I think the first way in which I feel kind of different from most YA bloggers is that I don't fangirl.

 

When I love a book, I'll post about it a few times. In round-ups, books to anticipate sort of lists. But when I think of fangirling, I think of... how to explain? SO MUCH EXCITEMENT (polandbananabooks, aka Christine, is awesome to watch & one of the first people I would think of). I do use all caps but then I'll record a video and I'll still sound like me, lower case. I don't think I'm really explaining what fangirling means to me very well, but examples of this remind me of the Throne of Glass fandomand the Lunar Chronicles fandom. I really like both books and series, but I'm not in love with them in the way of many other bloggers. Can I pinpoint a specific thing that separates my love for those books and my LOVE for the Queen's Thief series?

 

I don't know. But I also think that it's me and my personality too. I'm a pretty happy and easy to amuse person. My baseline is pretty happy. It would probably take A LOT for me to make me uber happy and fangirl in the way of Christine (my almost name-twin). That's not a bad thing - for either of us. Just a thing. And I might not have explained that well either *wrings hands*.

 

And anyway, this feeds into what books I choose to read. There are some books that are fairly popular in the blogosphere. These I avoid. The more popular a book, the more I kind of want to avoid it. It's not just the hype, it's that I've grown to distrust popularity as a reason to read a book. I know people will want to shame you -- oh, I can't believe you haven't read X and X yet -- and I'll say the same thing, but on a sliding scale of factors that are most important to me, reading the books that everyone else has ranks really, really low. More and more often I feel like there are so many books out there that I've missed out on because I've only been blogging since 2011 and YA books have been around for MANY more years, of course.

 

But the thing that makes me feel the weirdest as a blogger is how well my tastes align with Kirkus Reviews. When Sam of Realm of Fiction used to blog, we'd have pretty similar tastes. Maybe 75%? I think that sometimes our scale of how much we liked / disliked elements differed - so while I really liked The Bone Season, she was more middling about it. But Sam stopped blogging, and I no longer had her to compare books with. And I began to rely a lot on Kirkus, and buy more "literary" books.

 

It's really strange for a blogger to flat out admit to trusting a literary journal's perspective (and a little disturbing, given whatMalinda Lo highlighted about literary book reviews and diverse books; I sincerely hope those assumptions have not factored into my choice of books). I've seen many bloggers say that they don't understand why a book is so loved in literary journals. Often the books that get the most stars are the ones with the lowest ratings on Goodreads.

 

But, I don't always agree with them. Take the Made You Up review. Whoever reviewed MYU read it on a very surface level, in my opinion. I loved that book and the criticisms in that review made me really dumbfounded - like what and how did this happen? So about 90% of the time, I might agree with KR. Take the review for My Life Next Door. With that review I knew exactly what I was getting when I bought the book and I liked it just for that. It's always a combination of reading the Kirkus review, the synopsis for the book, an excerpt of the writing style, and sometimes other blogger reviews. But it always makes me feel a little guilty to look at Kirkus, because they're known to be the harshest literary journal and writers frequently complain about their Kirkus review. And thinking of the way I choose my books and what few bloggerly things I do (another post for another day) makes me feel less and less like a "true" blogger. Sometimes thinking about my reading tastes and how I choose what books to read makes me wonder whether my reviews are actually even helpful to the majority of the community. Would a teen even care about literary reviews?

Have you ever had moments when your reading tastes and experiences feel so different from the community's that you start to doubt yourself? How do you choose which books you read? Have you ever relied on literary journals or thought that your reading tastes were strange?