Four years ago I read Ariel by Sylvia Plath and while I am still somewhat indifferent to this particular poetry collection, it is worth acknowledging that it ignited my freefall into the world of wild, weird, freaky women. 

‍A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) first found me that same time horribly alone, scared, and a budding insomniac in the heart of the pandemic. 

After recently rediscovering my love for reading following the canon middle school/high school “reading is for losers” sabbatical (all the while secretly reading and writing fanfiction), I needed something to go obsess over to distract from the otherwise madness of the world.

ACOTAR is a young adult fantasy series—at least, in the opinion of its author, Sarah J. Maas—which follows a semi-orphaned human girl (classic) who holds the fate of the faerie realm in her hands (who is also conveniently one year above the age of consent, of course).

You see, I first heard of ACOTAR from TikTok’s online book community (dubbed “BookTok”) which painted the series as “hot” “spicy” and “fun”. Importantly, I was lacking both fun and romance during this chapter in my life, so in the same Indigo order, I bought the first book in the series along with Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Charles Bukowski’s Love is a Dog From Hell. 

These three books would shape who I am not only as a reader and writer, but also as a person. 

Vuong’s novel remains my favourite piece of literature in existence to this day, and Bukowski opened my eyes to the fact that poetry can be as disgusting as it is brilliant. But, in full candour, ACOTAR equally changed my life in the way that I rediscovered my love for reading that would mold the direction of my life.

The series is easy, fast-paced, full of predictable tropes, and served as my first jump from reading classic YA dystopian bestsellers such as Divergent and Matched as an early teen, to this fantasy world that completely had me enthralled, if not wholly embarrassed to admit it.

Since reading the series four years ago, I have since gone on to read better (and less humiliating) works which influenced my decision to enroll in a Bachelors of English literature—a decision which I am obliged to conclude began forming when I first picked up that beautiful red paperback. 

All this to say, I am re-reading the series and life is suddenly beautiful again. 

I want to acknowledge my prior comments in which I declare the ACOTAR series embarrassing, and touch on the discourse surrounding fantasy not being taken as a serious genre in an academic setting. To this, I declare that I don’t take any book in which the author uses the same, lazy sentence repeatedly throughout the entire series or one that utilizes a mating bond.

Now as I enter into the final year of my degree and shake off the weight creative writing seminars tend to place upon me, it’s safe to say that my taste has changed considerably since first picking up this series.

As the opening paragraph states, Plath was my introduction to freaks in literature—a path which I now find myself incapable of escaping, save for my guilty pleasure fantasy series that constantly beacons to me from the bottom of my bookshelf.

It’s worth noting here that freaks in the context of this article does not pertain to that of a sexual nature, but rather unhinged and unfavourable women.

Canadian author Mona Awad is without a doubt my favourite freak in the show. Awad’s best-known novel, Bunny, is perhaps at the top of my freaky women in literature list. To avoid spoilers for an impending Arthur Book Club, Bunny is a book about English majors joining a cult and playing with some bunnies…essentially.

To a degree, Bunny radicalized me. It was so gross and disgusting that when reading the synopsis to any curious people I encountered, their reaction walked the line of “what the fuck, Abby.”

It’s beautiful. 

The thing that I fell in love with about this novel in particular is that it opened my eyes to the realization that I was so over the “girlboss” narrative that so often follows female-driven novels, and one that certainly drove ACOTAR. 

I want to read a fucked up book about a fucked up woman and not feel like I’m being shoved some sort of feminist message down my throat. Can’t a girl commit some felonies in peace? God! 

Awad is a master at her craft of creating weird, freaky women. Having read her sophomore novel, All’s Well, which follows a drama professor with a chronic disease and a bubbling hatred for one of her students in tandem with my current read of her latest novel, Rouge—of which I will spare a synopsis on account of of my own early place in the story—I just find myself in constant comparison with Awad’s freaks, and the tortured poets of sorts that Maas writes her female leads as. 

Modern feminism has somewhat lost the plot, and this rings true in a lot of the literature produced in the past twenty or so years. More often than not, if a woman in a novel is characterized as a “freak” or otherwise villainized for simply going insane, then a redemption arc is surely to follow—one that condemns when a woman gets her freak on.

For an ACOTAR example, the main character’s sister, Nesta, is a raging bitch. Everyone in the ACOTAR cinematic universe hates her. I, on the other hand, loved her. Nesta’s piss-poor attitude and otherwise disdain for her sister and her lovers was the only interesting thing about the series. I love me a fiery bitch, and was utterly disappointed when Maas decided to have a whole “Nesta arc” in which “trauma” and “childhood” was to explain her behaviour and, with the help of a 6’7” fairy hunk, she found inner peace at last.

Boo! 

Compared to Awad in tandem with the other authors who satiate my desire to read about a messed up women the likes of Dizz Tate, The Brontë sisters, Jenny Hval, and—as BookTok proclaims her so—Ottessa Moshfegh, all let women freefully get their freak on. 

And yes, said freak develops from very real-world issues such as the neglect women face in medical spaces, abuse in relationships, childhood trauma, and the feminine urge to turn men into bunnies. However, fiction and the real-world are famously, not the same. Though one is rooted in the other, fiction offers a release and an outlet to rage and be weird and to find yourself rooting for a character you would never step close to in your own life. 

The amount of time I have wanted to go all Amy Dunne on someone yet refrained from doing so on account of my job and the obvious fear of getting in trouble is fruitful. 

So, with my established love for freaks and disdain for the washed-up “girlboss” narrative, one may be wondering why have I been deceived to reread a series that contains nothing I favour?

Well, to that I must declare that a whole lot of you have never had fun before in your life. Yes, ACOTAR is so unbelievably horrid and poorly written and I am surely going to regret ever admitting it to be in my collection shortly after publication, but goddamn those books are fun. 

I’ve taken to listening to the audiobooks of the series and have so far punched out two books in three days. It’s quite literally taking over my life—again. The pull for me this time around—much like my initial attraction to the book—is that my life seems somewhat out of control and I stand at an impasse as of where to go after my degree and so, the natural remedy to this problem is to read thousands of pages of fairy porn, obviously. 

The one concept that I have perhaps taken to more so than any other in my academic journey is that two things can exist at once. Just because something is poorly written doesn’t mean it’s not still enjoyable, and just because something is a classic doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable either. 

In that respect, just because I am pretentious in every other aspect of my life doesn’t mean I can’t still get down with faeries fucking. 

When I was a child, I read The Guardians of Ga’Hoole series a hundred times over and I still wave it as one of the greatest series of all time purely for the entertainment it granted me as a child. Nobody begins reading as an outlet for cultural criticism. Reading is supposed to be fun, and if I can’t grant myself the grace to remember this fact, then I fear I have foregone my initial passion for a degree and knack for passage analyses. 

This is all to say, long live weird women, and god bless the authors who grant them the space to get their freak on.