This book was not what I expected. From all of the hype I had heard about it over the past two-ish years, I expected a retelling of 'Beauty and the Beast' with more mystical/modern concepts. To be honest I don't believe that assumption wasn't entirely wrong but it wasn't exactly correct either. 

The story followed our protagonist of Feyre, a mortal human who makes a big mistake and now has to go to the land filled with Faeries, people her kind had grown so much to hate over the years in order to fulfill her debt. Towards the beginning, the novel seems very repetitive with Feyre's thoughts and motivations as to constantly being on edge and wanting to leave, which she keeps up for the majority of the novel. Although those thoughts are warranted it does become the overall focus of the book for a time with constant thoughts to what traps she could set and different things she could do to protect herself should she be in danger.

I personally found the book to be very slow towards the beginning with few things happening in the middle, and the bulk of the excitement occurring in the last 100-150 pages of the book. This does not at all mean that I did not like that book at all, even though I found it difficult to get into, to begin with. 

The portion of the storyline that held similarities to 'Beauty and the Beast' became fairly obvious within the first quarter of the novel, but only held vague similarities continuing on. However, with all of my criticism, the novel as a whole was very well written and I look forwards to picking up the 'Throne of Glass' series.

One thing I will say about this book series is that I am slowly growing to find the protagonist more annoying that I thought I would when I started on Red Queen. She keeps going back and forwards about what she wants with little to no regard for other characters, who she is willing to treat like dirt in exchange for doing what she hopes is right.

In exchange for her foolish actions, she lets others be hurt in their place and tells herself that the present moment is not a good time to feel guilt or remorse for their fates, even though sometimes you could say it's almost entirely her fault. Paired with this Mare keeps asking for others to save her when she wouldn't think twice about the possible repercussions of her actions on the ones she cares about.

Although the book itself is a good read that has a lot of things happening, I personally feel as though the back and forth of it all drags the book on for longer than it needs to be. I am glad, however, that the author kept up with leaving a little bit of predictability in the book, but left us guessing as to how certain events would turn out. In all of this ranting, it may not seem like it but I am looking forward to reading the next book when it is released as Victoria Aveyard writes awesome (for the most part) cliffhangers!