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Romance
Great Big Beautiful Life
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Feyre kills a wolf in the woods to feed her family and is dragged into the faerie lands of Prythian to pay for it, only to discover her captor, Tamlin, is not the beast she expected. A Court of Thorns and Roses launched one of the biggest romantasy series of the past decade, and its audiobook has an unusually interesting production history worth knowing before you press play.
The scoring:
The original 2015 audiobook was narrated by Jennifer Ikeda, and listener opinion on that recording was genuinely divided, some found her steady pacing well-suited to the slow-building fantasy setup, others found the delivery too measured for a story that gradually turns much more sensual and high-stakes. In 2025, for the series' 10th anniversary, Sarah J. Maas had the first five books entirely re-recorded with Elizabeth Evans, a narrator Maas has publicly credited with "an intimate understanding" of her storytelling and specifically handpicked as a friend and collaborator. Fans had petitioned for exactly this change for over a year beforehand. We're rating the current, actively-sold Elizabeth Evans edition, and the shift in listener sentiment since the re-recording has been notably positive, particularly around pacing through the book's tonal shift in its second half.
Who this is for: romantasy listeners who want a fae-world enemies-to-lovers setup as an entry point into a long-running, hugely popular series, and who don't mind a slower first act before the plot accelerates.
Who this is not for: listeners who want a fast-paced opener, the first third of the book is deliberately slow-building world and relationship setup before the central romance and plot tension take over.
The current standard audiobook edition uses Elizabeth Evans, re-recorded in 2025 for the series' 10th anniversary. The original 2015 recording was narrated by Jennifer Ikeda, but the Evans edition is now the primary version sold and is the one we reviewed.
No. A Court of Thorns and Roses is the start of its own series and does not require having read Maas's Throne of Glass books beforehand.
As of this review, the main series includes five novels plus companion novellas, with a sixth main book announced.
Written by Sarah J. Maas. Narrated by Elizabeth Evans. Browse more Romance audiobooks and ebooks.
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