Interview With ‘A FEAST OF THORNS AND ROSES’ Author Chelsea Cole

Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses has garnered unprecedented popularity over the past several years. Thanks to the rise of the BookTok community paired with a universal desire for escapism, the hit fantasy series has sold millions of copies, with readers clamoring to immerse themselves in the fictional land of Prythian. From stunning AI depictions of the various characters and courts to themed balls where attendees dress as Feyre, Rhysand and friends, readers are constantly seeking ways to feel connected to the rich world created by Maas. Now, thanks to cookbook author and food blogger Chelsea Cole, fans can get a true taste of Prythian.

A Feast of Thorns and Roses: The Unofficial Cookbook of A Court of Thorns and Roses, slated for release in early April, features 65 enchanting recipes inspired by the series. Catch up on some gossip with The Suriel’s Almond Tea Cakes for brunch, dine alongside Tamlin and Lucien with the “Welcome to Spring” Saucy Lemon Chicken, sip on Morrigan’s Sparkle and Spice Punch and other drinks that will make you feel like you’re partying at Rita’s with the Inner Circle, and everything in between.

PopHorror recently chatted with Cole about her forthcoming cookbook and its creation, her love for ACOTAR (which she has read in full several times) and what she hopes fellow fans take away from A Feast of Thorns and Roses.

PopHorror: How and when did the idea for this book come to be?

Chelsea Cole: It’s actually really funny, I was scrolling on my couch on a Friday night, as one does. I was about six months pregnant at the time. I saw my cousin post about her Sims cookbook, and I was like, “The Sims? Like the computer game?” I was so confused and it prompted a deep dive on my part, and I learned about the world of fan cookbooks, which was something that was unfamiliar to me before that. Although when I was little, I had a Beanie Babies cookbook that I was obsessed with. And then I was like, “You know what is noticeably absent from all these fan cookbooks? There isn’t an ACOTAR cookbook.”

I had just finished my second re-read of the whole series at the time, and I knew that it had quite the following. This was two years ago and, back then, it had a huge following, but now it’s even more so I feel like. I was like, “This needs to be a thing.” I knew of a literary agent just through mutual friends and connections and I was like, “I’m just gonna cold email this person I do not even know.” I had self-published two cookbooks previously and I said, “I’m just gonna cold email this agent, see if she thinks this is a good idea or not, and we’ll go from there.” So I did that on the same Friday night and she thought it was a great idea. She knew just the publisher and a few months later, I signed a contract, so it happened pretty fast.

PopHorror: What was the process of choosing these different dishes? You have a little bit of everything, and I love how it’s not limited to recreations of stuff that, say, Feyre ate. You have The Bone Carver’s Lair. It’s really creative.

Chelsea Cole: As soon as I got the deal, I felt, which this might sound silly, but an enormous sense of responsibility because this does have such a big fan base, and I just really wanted to make fans excited about what I created. And so I started by doing another re-read. I kind of used a hybrid approach of listening to the series and using the Kindle app on my computer so that I could search really easily. That came in handy. As I was listening and re-reading, I would make notes of, one, any food that’s mentioned, and then, two, every notable character, place, scene. Not everything that I wanted to do ended up making it into a recipe or into the book, but it was just like, “OK, this moment, this character, this weird creature needs a recipe.” And then I would sit down and just have massive brainstorming sessions and work my way through how to bring that to life through food.

For example, I have a whole section that’s dedicated to essentially the villains and the creepy creatures of the series. One of my favorite people to hate in the series is Ianthe, and so I really wanted a recipe for her. That one took me a lot of work, but I settled on these homemade crackers that are in the shapes of different moon phases, and I feel very happy with that. And so just a lot of brainstorming around that. For the twins in the third book, there’s this whole scene where they are going to the wall altogether, and so I did sandwiches for their camping trip essentially. It took a lot of random brainstorming and really going through ideations. Some things were a lot easier than others. For example, The Suriel. Everybody talks about The Suriel spilling the tea. Like, “OK, we’re doing some kind of tea cake for that. That I’ve got.” But other things took a lot more creativity.

PopHorror: I love how you did drinks with the Inner Circle!

Chelsea Cole: Totally! That was one of my favorite sections to write. Some of those were really easy because Sarah J. Maas does such a great job at describing the characters. One of the things that’s fun is, a lot of them, she even describes their smell. And so, for example, she talks about how Morrigan smells like citrus and cinnamon, and so I’m like, “Great, I can work with that. Got it.” But then other things like Cassian, I obsessed over that one. With his character, I settled on a riff on a Long Island iced tea, it just felt really appropriate for Cassian. But it was really fun to think through their characters and be like, “OK, what would they drink?”

PopHorror: In crafting these recipes, were you kind of just in your kitchen seeing what worked and didn’t work?

Chelsea Cole: Largely, yeah. It’s funny, I signed the book deal when I was about eight months pregnant and the manuscript was due when my son was six months old, and so a lot of this was done with a newborn, which was it’s own special adventure. So a lot of times, I would be nap trapped and working in the Notes app on my phone, and kind of brainstorming through the recipe. In a perfect world, I like to start with a base recipe that I’m tweaking as I’m testing it, and that makes it a little bit easier to translate to something for a reader. So definitely a lot of thinking through it first and then executing, which is so much different from how I would usually approach recipes. Usually with recipe development, I do start in the kitchen. But since this is such a different creative process, I had to go in with a plan because it’s dedicated to a character or a court or whatever it might be. And so it was very, very different.

PopHorror: I’d love to learn more about your background. You mentioned that you self-published two previous cookbooks. How did you get into the culinary world?

Chelsea Cole: I’ve been food blogging since 2010, which feels crazy. I started my blog when I was a sophomore at the University of Oregon, my blog is called A Duck’s Oven because that’s the mascot of the university. At the time, it was like, “I want college students to know they can cook!,” and that kind of turned into simple recipes for home cooks. And then in 2017, I actually turned my focus toward sous vide cooking, which was so fun. I’ve self-published two cookbooks on sous vide, and most of my food blog is now dedicated to that. So this is such a wild departure for me. But I’ve stayed near Portland, Oregon — now I live slightly outside of it — my whole life. I’m married to my high school sweetheart and we have our son, and I’m actually pregnant with our second.

PopHorror: Congrats!

Chelsea Cole: Thank you, it’s a very busy year. So this was a very fun departure. Sous vide is a very modern type of cooking. It’s very technical. There’s not a lot of room for creativity. I mean, there is, but there isn’t. This was such a different process and I really enjoyed it, and hope to do a lot more books like it in the future.

PopHorror: Are there any other books that you can see inspiring a cookbook?

Chelsea Cole: So many. I feel like some of them I can’t say because I’m truly trying to make them happen. So many books, so many TV series, movies. I feel like there’s a lot of things that can be a cookbook. It’s actually funny, as I’ve been promoting this, I’ve seen people say things like, “What recipes could possibly be in there? I feel like they never talk about food in ACOTAR.” And I’m like, “Re-read it and go in thinking, ‘I’m looking for food,’ and there is food everywhere.” Half the scenes I feel like are in a dining room. Not every book or movie or whatever presents as many opportunities, but this one really, really did.

PopHorror: How did you discover ACOTAR? What was it about these books that drew you in so much?

Chelsea Cole: I feel like I have the story that so many other women do. I heard about the series years and years ago. I read it for the first time I want to say in 2021 and I loved it. I think for many of us who were big readers when we were younger, who read Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, all that stuff, and then maybe had a lull with reading, this book really resonated and brought us back into that world. For a really long time, most of the books that I read were thriller fiction, which I still love. But the great thing about something like ACOTAR is, it is fantasy that is just geared more toward adults.

The great thing about fantasy is, it’s so immersive. I think since 2020, the idea of escapism has been really nice for some of us. Being able to live in another world for a little while is such a treat. And so that was definitely the case for me, and it made me fall in love with reading again in a way that I hadn’t been in so long. It totally also just turned me on to the fantasy genre. It wasn’t something that I really participated in. Little things here and there, like The Martian, which isn’t even fantasy, that’s sci-fi. I just hadn’t read much fantasy, and after reading this series, it got me into — I’m deep into Zodiac Academy currently — but so many other fantasy series, and I really credit ACOTAR with that.

PopHorror: I completely agree. I’ve read nothing but Stephen King for the past however many years, and then my friend read all of ACOTAR in the span of weeks and was like, “You have to read them!” I was like, “OK!” I didn’t want it to end. Do you have a favorite book in the series? And also a favorite character?

Chelsea Cole: My favorite book is ACOMAF, A Court of Mist and Fury. I feel like people are either ACOMAF people or Silver Flames people, which is always interesting to me. I am more of an ACOMAF person. And then favorite character, that one is hard. I had someone ask me this recently and I spun it into something else. One underrated character who is barely in the books but I just love is Alis. I would love a bigger deep dive on Alis and her story. We know a decent amount, but I’d love to know more there. I was gonna say Amren is another favorite of mine. I might even call her a little bit underrated. But yeah, I’d say that those two are my favorites.

PopHorror: As far as the recipes in the book, are they more for experienced people in the kitchen? Can beginners handle these?

Chelsea Cole: I tried to make it incredibly beginner-friendly because I know a lot of the people who buy this book are going to buy it because it’s ACOTAR-related, and they’re just gonna be really excited to look at the book through a new lens, which is amazing. I know a lot of people might buy it not even planning on making a single recipe from it. But I’m hoping they’ll open it and see the recipes are approachable enough that they’ll feel like, “OK, I can make this.” Even stuff like ingredient sourcing, because so many of the things in the book, it’s like venison and rabbit and stuff like that, and so I made swaps just with beef and chicken, the things that we can find easily and cook easily. There’s a couple more obscure things in there, like, I have bone marrow. It sounds fancy, but it’s really not difficult to prepare. You just roast it. And there’s a couple desserts that are a little more involved, but I wouldn’t say anything is hard. There might just be some things that take a while to prepare. There’s two dessert sections and one of them, every recipe is inspired by a different court. So that was really, really fun. It’s harder than you might think, but really fun.

PopHorror: Yeah because you meet all of the High Lords at some point, but you don’t know a ton about a couple of them.

Chelsea Cole: Exactly. The Dawn Court, for example, was by far the hardest for me because we just don’t know very much about it. Somebody asked me recently what one of my favorite recipes in the book is, and the Dawn Court dessert might be my favorite recipe. It’s an orange tiramisu and I am obsessed with it.

PopHorror: Have you read the other books by Sarah J. Maas? Throne of Glass and Crescent City?

Chelsea Cole: Yes, I’ve read them all. I actually just started a re-read of Throne of Glass, I’ve only read through it once, and it’s such a mammoth series that I was like, “OK, this needs a re-read.” So I’m working through that right now.

PopHorror: Looking ahead, is there anything else upcoming for you that people can look forward to?

Chelsea Cole: Right now, this is kind of the big thing. Hopefully we’ll have news on a new project in the next few months, but nothing I can talk about now. And then besides that, having a little girl this summer and focusing on that for a few months in the fall.

PopHorror: Where will A Feast of Thorns and Roses be available?

Chelsea Cole: It’s available for preorder now everywhere. I’d add that Barnes & Noble is doing a special edition and it’s gonna have a really gorgeous over-the-top cover, and it’s going to have an exclusive menu and exclusive recipes, so that is going to be really fun. But it’s also going to be available anywhere you buy books. Most of your local bookstores will probably have it if you want to shop local, definitely on BookShop.org and lots of other places. So pretty much anywhere you can buy books.

PopHorror: Did you have a hand in the design and the overall look of the book?

Chelsea Cole: With this book, there’s kind of one direction to go, but yeah, it was so fun. Honestly, I was presented with things, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, that looks amazing.” Not a lot of feedback to give because that team is fantastic. There’s so many little details throughout the book that I love, little illustrations here and there that are really thoughtful, and just kind of bring everything to life. Obviously, stars wherever we can put them, rose details where we can put them. So yeah, that was really fun.

PopHorror: Was there anything additional that you want ACOTAR fans to know?

Chelsea Cole: I’ll add that one section of the book, I think people are going to love. I created seven different themed party ideas that people can throw that use recipes from the book, and almost all of them, I came up with game ideas that you can play at these themed parties. So I had a lot of fun with that. If you have a book club or just a group of friends who love the series, I did the heavy lifting for you. There’s some great party inspiration in there that I hope people will love.

Thanks for speaking with us, Chelsea!