A Court of Thorns and Roses is the book that built half of modern romantasy's vocabulary — fae courts, the bargain, the bat-winged shadow daddy. It's also the book readers most often have to defend the first half of. Here's the honest shape of how people actually feel.
The one thing everyone says
There is a near-universal piece of advice attached to this series: start slow, and don't quit before Book 2. A Court of Thorns and Roses (Book 1) is widely described as having a genuinely slow build — "a glacial pace until midway, then 0 to 100 in the span of five pages." Plenty of readers admit they almost put it down. Almost none of them regret pushing on, because the consensus is that the series — specifically A Court of Mist and Fury (ACOMAF, Book 2) — is where it becomes the thing people are obsessed with.
If you go in knowing Book 1 is the setup and the explosion comes later, you'll have a much better time than readers who expected the hype to land on page one.
What readers love
Underneath the slow start, Book 1 is a Beauty-and-the-Beast retelling with real bones: a mortal huntress, a cursed fae court, a masked High Lord. When it turns — and it turns hard in the final act, Under the Mountain — readers describe being unable to stop.
But the deeper love is for the world. Prythian, the courts, the politics, the slow reveal of who's really dangerous and who's really safe — Maas plays a long game, and Book 1 is the board being set. Readers also single out Feyre's arc and the later depiction of her trauma and PTSD as more serious than the cover suggests.
And then there's the back-half payoff that the whole fandom is built on: the shift in love interest, the Night Court, and a slow-burn that becomes one of the genre's defining romances.
What divides them
The big one is the Tamlin vs Rhysand debate — arguably romantasy's most divisive ship discourse. Tamlin is Book 1's love interest; the series later recasts him, and how "earned" that turn feels is where readers split. Some find his second-book heel turn abrupt. On the other side, Rhysand has his own critics, who point to his Book-1 actions (the wine, Under the Mountain) as genuinely troubling rather than swoony. The fandom argues this in good faith and at length — which is itself a sign of how invested people get.
The other divide is experience level. New-to-fantasy readers tend to love Book 1; veterans of the genre more often find it slow or familiar. It's an on-ramp, and on-ramps feel different depending on where you're merging from.
The spice and the pacing
Spice-wise, Book 1 is mild — call it a 2 out of 5. The series is famous for heat, but that reputation is mostly ACOMAF and beyond, where the spice climbs to a solid 4-ish and the slow-burn tension finally pays off (readers will point you to a certain chapter 55). If you're here primarily for spice, know that you have to earn it across the first book.
So, should you start it?
If you're new to fantasy romance and willing to treat Book 1 as the patient setup it is, ACOTAR is one of the best front doors the genre has — and the series reward is real. If a slow first half makes you abandon books, or you won't sign up for five volumes to reach the best ones, this might not be your entry point. The trick the happiest readers know: go in expecting a slow burn, not a sprint.