OH NO NO!! You cannot make me pick.

I tried reading the first book of TOG. I'd heard good things about it, so I tried really hard, but I couldn't like it. So when I started ACOTAR, I was really nervous that it would be as bad as TOG was, but thankfully ACOTAR has been much better.

@ARoyalPrincess I agree! I read the first three books of ToG but I just couldn't get into them - I felt that they got worse as time went on. However, ACOTAR rescued Sarah J Maas for me.

I love them both for different reasons, I don’t think I can choose. Also just curious, what didn’t y’all like about ToG?

I can't choose. I love acotar as much as I love tog. The characters, the stories...everything is just ,,chef's kiss,,.

But I don't actually like acosf so mush, so maybe tog is better for me

No bag feelings, they're both amazing 😊

@NestaFireheart At the moment, I can think of two main problems that I had with the first book of ToG. Their might have been others, but these are the ones that come to mind now,

First, the main character seemed pretty dumb. Well, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she wasn't actually dumb, but at any rate she didn't fit into my idealization of an assassin. I imagined that as an assassin would she would be cunning and sly, making herself likeable to as many people as possible, and then watching and waiting until the time was right and she had gained their trust, whereupon she could strike out like a viper and make her escape. Instead, she sulked and behaved in a way that was annoying and off-putting to all those around her. Of course, that could have been part of her mask, but from what I could see it certainly didn't help her case at all. I also had a problem with the running scenes. Running is such an important part of training for sports and activities that involve physical exertion. Even athletes like swimmers or figure skaters, whose sports aren't even on land, have running as part of their training regimen. I would have thought that the main character, being an assassin would have plenty of experience with running and would be one of the better runners in the group. However, she turned out to be the one who struggled most, lagging very far behind everyone else. Granted, it could have been part of her ploy to look weak and make the others underestimate her, but I got the impression that her weakness was genuine. I personally thought it seemed out-of-character for her.

The other problem I had with the book was that the climax was very anticlimactic. Often, in a good mystery, there will be a lot of build-up with red herrings pointing to Person Z as the culprit, then you get a big surprise when it turns out that the culprit isn't actually Person Z, but someone that you didn't suspect at all. Not so with this book (for me at least). All the "red herrings" turned out to be not red herrings at all but genuine clues, and my main suspect turned out to be the culprit. Personally, I found this terribly disappointing.

@ARoyalPrincess thank you so much for the reply!

It's been so long since I read TOG, so bear with me if this is a little discombobulated (:

My initial reaction is that I think you should give it one more shot if you can stomach it. I completely get hating a book so much that you can't go on, but so many of the things that you dislike about TOG are addressed in the rest of the series, and I think that because the series is so long and full of detail SJM made the plot move fairly slowly in the beginning, which I can see being really frustrating and off-putting for a lot of people.

I also just wanted to say that I really enjoyed the running scenes because I found her efforts to be inspiring after losing all of her strength as a slave, but I totally respect your opinion about it and can see where you're coming from.

Sorry if this feels like I'm trying to force you to read it, though, I'm just really excited to discuss this and wanted to share this series I love with more people and share my opinions about what might help you to enjoy it more.

Good luck (:

Thanks for the encouragement! I actually hadn't thought about the fact that she struggled with running because she had lost her strength, but now that you mention it, it makes a lot more sense. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll decide to try it again after all. :)