Oh my god I am still not over how the acotar series just absolutely fumbled Tamlin and Feyre’s relationship. We went from Ethel Cain level “This was all for you” to now he’s just a generic toxic macho dude now I guess?? Are you kidding me?? I’m sorry but that is so boring. Worse, there was a great setup. Both of them survive Amarantha, and instead of exploring how that kind of shared trauma warps love into something painful and unrecognizable we get, “he’s controlling now.” That’s it?? That’s the arc??
Show me them trying to be together and they can’t breathe around each other because everything reminds them of what happened. Or where Feyre looks at him and remembers the boy who sent her away to save her life and the man who couldn’t save her under the mountain. Or where Tamlin sees her and is just haunted by the fact that she died for him and he didn’t do anything to stop it. That’s angst and tragedy. And for Feyre instead of just the repetitive “I was treated so badly” internal monologues or the “I would’ve fallen in love with the first person to show me kindness” (I freaking HATE that line so much you don’t understand) imagine if we actually got her grieving that relationship.
Because she loved him beyond words. She died for him. Amarantha’s last taunt was literally “Say you don’t love him” and Feyre wouldn’t say it because her love was that real, she couldn’t even lie about her feelings. If only we could have read Feyre coming to the terrifying realization that the love that was strong enough to break a 50 year curse curse isn’t strong enough to put them back together after it. All that grief and anger, but with her trying to keep telling herself that they were real, and they mattered, so why aren’t they enough anymore?
And you’re telling me that same love just evaporates into a lesson about red flags?? We got the most surface-level “toxic man vs strong heroine” rewrite imaginable. I feel like everything I think about those novels comes to the same conclusion. Absolute. Wasted. Potential.