The main character is Feyre, a name that my tongue did trip over every once in awhile, but a name that I do really like. She's 19 years old and lives with her two older sisters and her father. Her mother died from a sickness a while back. Her father lost his living and all their possessions with some risky deals, and now they live in a shack. He is unable to do much for them because the creditors broke his leg and beat him really bad. Since then he's just carved wooden things and pretty much left it all up to Feyre to take care of the family. She learned to hunt in order to get food for her family, as well as to sell what she didn't need to the villagers in order to get money for the things they had to buy. Her two older sisters are kind of ungrateful and don't seem to appreciate Feyre for all that she does. The story begins in a winter time, and food/prey is scarce, so she must travel farther from the house for any game. She has heard of strange, huge wolves and other creatures in the forest lately, and knows they could be faeries. While she is good with a bow and arrow, a faerie is not easy to kill. It would take a special kind of arrow, made of ashwood, in order to kill one. There was a time that faeries enslaved and tortured the humans, but a long time before Feyre was born, a treaty was reached, and for the most part they stay in their own lands. Anyway as she is out hunting she finds a deer finally. But she's not the only one. A giant wolf is also sizing up the deer. She must decide what to do. But she also wonders if the wolf could be a faerie. But she decides that her family needs the deer, and the wolf isn't a faerie, and so she shoots the wolf, and then the deer.
She brings home the wolf and deer after she's skinned and taken what she needs. The next day she takes what she can sell to the market in town where she meets a faerie hunter, and learns that there have been reports of even worse things out there. When she gets home, there is a sudden tearing off of the door and a monstrous creature, who is also a fae has arrived to take revenge for the wolf she killed, that was a friend/emissary of his. He says that the treaty states a life for a life. He offers her either a quick death here, or she can come and live the rest of her life with him in the faerie land, Prythian. Tamlin is the fae who takes her back to live on his estate. He doesn't make her do anything. No chores, no slavery, no nothing. Just feeds her and has her live there. When she mentions that she can't stay forever, she must figure a way to get back, he tells her not to worry, her family is being taken care of.
For the most part he is a gentleman, never really cruel in any way. She grows to like him, and have feelings for him. She learns of a blight in their land, one that she tries to find a way to help with, as well as wondering if she'll have to worry about her family dealing with it. Turns out in the end that the blight isn't quite what it seems or what she's been told. Not to mention that many things humans believe of faeries is not the truth. In the end when faced with being able to just go back and live with her family, she will wonder if Tamlin still needs her, and she must decide whether to go back to help him, and what she would be willing to risk her life for or how to do that in order to save him.
I loved the story. Tamlin was great. I don't feel like it was insta-love. I feel like the romance developed pretty well, especially for the type of situation it was. Although with what Feyre finds out about the blight, I'm surprised she didn't wonder more about Tamlin's feelings for her at the end. I like that she does leave in order to try to save him, but when she comes back to try to rescue him, she doesn't do anything that could make it harder for him when she is there. I liked Lucien, and even Rhysander was a good character from the end. The villain was perfect, and the trials also perfect. As I said, a great story, and I can't wait to read the next book and find out what will happen with the "deal with the devil" that Feyre made towards the end of this one in order to save her own life so that she could finish the trials to save Tamlin.
