Review: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson

Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.
Elisa is the chosen one.

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can't see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he's not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people's savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do.

My Review:

I wanted to have some fantasy in my book life, so I picked up this baby here. I'm glad I did because I had heard so much about it, and I wanted to know what all of the hubbub was about.

First off, I loved the idea behind the story. Not the Godstone part, but the idea that a princess is going off to marry a handsome king and become something much more than just a royal with a crown. However, I feel like the storyline could have been done better. I was all for Elisa being a bigger girl, heck I'm a bigger girl, and I like having a normal non-size zero in my stories, but Carson overdid it. Elisa was constantly thinking about food. She compared everything to pastries and just wouldn't stop talking about sweets and meat and more! Larger people don't think about things in terms of food. 

Another thing that bothered me was how Elisa kept going on and on about her largeness. Like I wrote earlier, I'm a bigger girl. I understand Elisa's self-consciousness, BUT she wouldn't stop complaining about it. 

The side characters of the story were enjoyable, but I didn't feel myself loving them. Rosario was probably the cutest one, and even then he kind of angered me at points. Humberto and Hector were my favorite characters, Hector more so, they were much more realistic than the other ones, or perhaps Carson just gave them better depth.

My biggest pet peeve with the story was the religious ideal. I had no idea that this story would be centered so much around religion. I'm not a big fan of reading about it in general, and this story is full of it. If I had known that, I probably wouldn't have requested it for review. I couldn't understand how Carson created this unique fantasy land, but she couldn't create a god/goddess who wasn't already provided from real life.

All in all, I'm a little disappointed with this read. It wasn't bad, but I don't really recommend it to anyone who wants an action-packed fantasy read.

*Note: I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. This in no way altered my opinion/review.