I tried to read a Court of Thorns and Roses and couldn't do it. It's ostensibly a Beauty and the Beast retelling, only the "beast" is a sexy man with his face covered by a thin slip of a man. ("Oh no! However will we be able to tell that he's sexy???") Also he's got big Christian Grey/Edward Cullen dick energy.

The main character is written pretty shallowly/inconsistently, slaving away to her two abusive stepsisters whom she hates, but after she's kidnapped, she spends the next how-many-ever chapters pining after them.

YYMV, but it was a DNF for me and I'd personally recommend something by Naomi Novik or Holly Black instead.

The ACOTAR series has gratuitous sex scenes that seem to go on forever. And then in the most recent book in the series, A Court of Silver Flames, Maas inexplicably veers off into hard core porn. I couldn't finish the book. It was too much.

Instead, I would recommend her Throne of Glass series. It's a take-off on the Cinderella story, and has a lot of powerful female characters (some quite evil). (I've never read Anne Bishop, so I can't comment on the other commenter's critique. I'll have to check out Bishop.)

Her Crescent City series was just too violent. I couldn't handle it.

In addition to Naomi Novik, I would also recommend Marissa Meyer, Robin LaFevers, and Katherine Arden.

Do NOT start me on that woman. She blatantly rips off Anne Bishop, who is an absolutely amazing author. Maas even stole an entire RACE from Bishop's black jewels series and inserted bastardized and practically racist version of them into her stories.

Also, her throne of glass series is basically a Mary Sue self-insert rewrite of Bishop's character Surreal from the same series.

Do yourself a favor and check out Anne Bishop, she doesn't get enough love and her books are all amazing: https://www.annebishop.com/ss.price.html

ehh not a fan personally. too much gratuitous sex in ACOTAR for my liking, and although I know it's meant to be a fairytale retelling (Beauty and the Beast) they did the 'Twilight vampire' thing with the Beast, where now he's this sparkling golden man whom the protagonist instantly falls in love with. I thought the protagonist was a bit too far on the Mary Sue side.

I haven't read Throne of Glass but I hear it's more of a YA series with the usual pitfalls of the genre. I remember seeing people with the book like 10 years ago when I was in middle school so that's sort of disincentivised me from reading it haha

Ehhhh, unpopular opinion here I guess but I’m on the second book of ACOTAR right now and I can’t put it down. I guess there are more sex scenes as the series progresses but out of a 600 page book it’s like 5 scenes. And there is a focus on female pleasure and consent.

Out of the Sarah J. Maas books I would recommend Throne of Glass over A Court of Thorns and Roses (although I've finished neither of the two series).

If you're looking for an enjoyable YA fantasy read though I would instead recommend to skip Maas altogether and go read the Grishaverse books by Leigh Bardugo or Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson instead.

I highly recommend Eye of Night by Pauline Alama. It's out of print but you can get it on Kindle now. It does start with a male character, a priest who has lost his faith, who meets a woman and follows her on her quest. She's written as ugly, unwanted, nothing special: except that she's determined and doesn't give up. It draws on Medieval traditions.

I've honestly never read anything quite like it.

Contrast with the rather excellent series that starts with Rhapsody: Child of Blood - the woman in it is one of the most powerful people in the world, and one of the most beautiful as well (but doesn't know it) and everyone is in love with her (but she doesn't realize it) etc - the story itself very creative and the fantasy elements are outstanding, but the main character is basically perfect. The story is huge and epic, and I'm surprised it's not mentioned more. It's still worth a read even with the caveat of the "naive but perfect" protagonist; the fantasy aspects felt really original and I feel it inspired a lot that came after it.

So I guess, having not read Sarah Mass's books... you can enjoy works while acknowledging the flaws.

In fact - forgive yourself for enjoying something even if you notice it's flaws. Our world is flawed.

I’ve read the Throne of Glass series. It’s okay. It’s starts with the nonsense that a teenage girl who’s been held as a slave in a salt mine is physically strong enough to beat up men men trained in combat (it takes a couple of books before a plausible explanation for this emerges). She’s ‘strong’ in a very male, stereotypical way - by physical strength, fighting, and not dressing like a woman but also being very beautiful and desirable. In other words, quite typical YA garbage.

There are some great scenes about a witch and her wyvern which could easily have been a better focus for the book.

So it’s worth reading and it’s fairly enjoyable, just frustrating in parts.

I liked ACOTAR, but mainly the second and third book because the love interest in book 1 sucks. There is a lot of gratuitous sex as others have said. I really loved Throne of Glass when I was younger but stopped at book 5 because her fae fetish was getting too obvious.

A really good fantasy I was lately was The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart. Really nice world and characters