Sarah J Maas murdered my cat
In 2013, in a haunted cemetery, a small fluffy dummy ran screaming at me from a hedge. Without preamble (other than the screaming) he climbed up my body and into my arms, where he promptly shut up. I was in a bit of a folklore kick at the time and named him Tam Lin.
Those first years were perfect. Timtam lived up to his name: constantly falling off horses, appearing out of nowhere, forever needing to be rescued, and being generally useless to any and all Janets (I once watched him clock a live mouse in the house, then pointedly lie down with his back to it. Another time, he burned his paw on a candle flame, looked at his paw with bewilderment, then touched the flame again. He did that twice before I realized he would keep going unless I stopped him.)
So imagine how devastating it was for me 3 years later to come across two supposed books about Timbletam. What a lie ACOTAR was! Where is the shape shifting? Where is my beloved, Pro-Choice Janet, throwing her boyfriend down a well? Feyre could never.
But worst of all was the character assassination? Tambulance was not a reticent blonde (ew) hereditary ruler that complained ab the system but refused to pass any reforms. He was a fluffy, anti-monarchical tuxedo baby (handsome despite an ill-advised soulpatch) who toppled anything he didn't like. If he needed you to know something, he screamed until you figured it out. He would never have collaborated with the clergy. He would never have fiddled (real Tams are bongos, don't @ me). He would never have sat quietly next to a woman who forced him to wear a costume! He certainly never let anyone hang out in the bathroom alone.
And let me tell you, if a self-righteous illiterate child left my boy for a 1%er white-savior bat, he would've just re-upped his rabies vax and called it a day.
The only things the real Mr. TL Business, Esq. shared in common with that book man were that:
1)he wasn't nearly as horny as everyone makes him out to be
he liked shoving things into bathtubs
he did love a border patrol (right legs on the fence rail, left legs on the pickets, high/low style, god he was so weird and dumb)
You can't even imagine the embarrassment and pain of having to explain to vet techs and new friends and baristas and gas leak inspectors that SJM stole my baby name. I came up with the idea of using an existing name as a name first. Plus, if I had been going to name my cat after porn, I would have chosen actual porn like Mr. Popper's Penguins or The Wapentake of Wirral: A History of the Royal Franchise of the Hundred and Hundred Court of Wirral in Cheshire.
There's no way it was a coincidence that my best boy left us in September 2023, the same month SJM confirmed she was working on ACOTAR 6.
Anyway, I need book recs with an aloof MMC with really healthy kidneys where the vibe is neither cat murder nor manorialism.