Book Review: The Girl of Fire and Thorns

Once a century one person is chosen for greatness. 

She is done being useless.  Better to fight-perhaps die- than to stand idly by.  Her friends won’t hesitate.  Neither will her enemies.  She is the chosen one, and her time has come. 

Book review:

The Girl of Fire and Thorns is a book that jumped out at me while I was browsing the teen new release section at my local library.  The title intrigued me.  The book cover was appealing with its fiery stone encased by brambles.

I immediately wanted to know why the book was named this way.  What is the fire?  How did the thorns come into play?

The book itself started a tad slow to me.  I was hoping for a “jump right into the action” sort of book so this one fell flat for me.  But its unique writing style kept me reading.

 

The story is about a sixteen year old girl that is chosen by God to serve in some unexplained way.  She is not thin, gorgeous or confident.  Instead, Elisa is an overweight wall flower; a second born princess that is thrust into a destiny that she both fears and dislikes.

Because of the Godstone that she bears in her navel, her life is in great danger.  After being forced into a marriage to the King of a larger realm, Elisa is treated like a child and asked to hide her marriage from the people.  Kidnapped by desert thieves, Elisa soon discovers that the truths she had grown up have been tainted.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns, although set in a fantastical setting, feels realistic.  Elisa’s fears are genuine, her rivals hatred and jealousy comes across well and the sorrow that she feels as death surrounds her will tug at your heart.

Overall, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, was an interesting read.  Certainly different from what is on the market today.

Rae Carson was not afraid to kill off major characters during this book.  A couple of which actually annoyed me.  I like authors that are gutsy enough to kill of characters but these deaths felt wrong to me.  Too sudden and too raw for my liking.  You expect a romantic thread to have at least one ounce of satisfaction but this book fell short in that area.

Another thing that frustrated me was how quickly the ending came.  There was a huge build up and then when the actual peak came it was rushed so quickly that I didn’t have time to comprehend what had happened.  What took chapters to build only took a couple paragraphs to complete.

 

For writing style I loved this book.  Rae Carson did an exceptional job of using several formats of writing styles that flowed beautifully. 

Star rating: 4 out of 5 for writing style and originality.  

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