First and foremost, let me just say that I don't like leaving bad reviews and none of my opinions are meant to insult the author. However, Flames Unbound leaves much to be desired. (Also, I apologize now for the length of this review...just know it could've been so much longer).

I saw this book on Netgalley and it sounded very similar to Fourth Wing-a novel that I personally did not find to be as great as it was made out to be, but still gave me a desire to read dragon books-and I decided to give it a try.

As noted in many of the other reviews, Flames Unbound has some issues with plagiarism.
Let's start with the obvious: this was quite obviously based on Fourth Wing. The author claims that she started writing this in July of 2023, meaning she began the project at the peak of Fourth Wing's hype. (She also says she only spent two weeks editing...make of that what you will).
Instead of Violet Sorrengail, we have Vesper Sora, a book nerd with a chronic illness who is reluctantly tossed into Dragon War College and is well-known because one of her parents (in this case her dad) is famous. There, Vesper meets Kyrin, a moody, reclusive, but oh-so-sexy son of a rebel with the power to wield shadows... sound familiar?
Additionally, there's a character named Thane (instead of Dain), a small group of Vesper's friends who are hornier than any real teenager has any right to be, Vesper being nicknamed "Viper," Vesper having special hair and special magic and a special dragon, and that's just a few of the eerie similarities between Fourth Wing and Flames Unbound. I'd also like to point out that the writing style is extremely similar as well.
"The course was hard. Really f***ing hard."
"She was enraptured at how gorgeous and mysterious and untouchable this guy was. His stare alone gave off dark, brooding, don't-come-near-me vibes, but Vesper only wanted to get closer to uncover who this ambiguous, attractive, centurion was."
"Holy sh*t, what an exquisite male if she'd ever seen one. Her mouth may have actually started to f***ing water. What the f**k."
"The dreamiest, hottest guy to grace the Continent. As beautiful as he was intelligent, a delicious morsel of brain, brawn, and beauty, all wrapped up in a dark blue package---for her."
I'll spare you the rest of the quotes I highlighted (and there's a lot), but I'd also like to mention the other popular books/tropes that Flames Unbound steals.
Shadow and Bone ... Vesper has light magic and glows a silvery-white to counter her lover's shadow magic? Sounds like Alina and the Darkling...
Divergent ... in addition to Vesper falling for her mentor, there's a scene where some of her companions try to drown her out of jealousy but are caught by Kyrin. Sounds a lot like the scene where Tris is almost tossed into the water after being tied up in her sleep...
Not to mention the countless other tropes the book uses...

Oh, but Abby, it's not fair to judge a book based on other books. Nothing in this world is truly original!
Okay, fine. Let's discuss the parts of the book that were original.
Firstly, I didn't mention it above, but Vesper has blue hair. And so does Kyrin. Everybody has rainbow hair. Cool, I guess. I wrote a story about dragons with rainbow hair too...when I was twelve. Also, the only two people with blue hair end up as lovers? Sweet Home Alabama playing softly in the distance
Whatever. I can move past rainbow hair. But the lack of plot?
Vesper goes to dragon school...she does some fights, gets put in the Special Program for Special People, fights some more, goes to the capital, and then suddenly she's so in love with Kyrin that she makes babies with him every other chapter for the remainder of the book, starting at about 60%. I'm not kidding when I say that. Personally, I am not a fan of smutty books so I had my roommate and her friend read one of the many sex scenes and they only made it 3 pages in before they started dying and said it's the worst smut they've ever read, so... there's that.
Also ... the pheromone side plot... When Vesper and Kyrin have sex, apparently they release pheromones (like a bug?) that make everyone else horny. I'll give you one quote and then leave it at that:
"Blowjobs during lectures, sparring matches turning into dry humping romps. A straight up bacchnalia in the Equitem Secteur."
One of my biggest pet peeves in books is when they ramble on for what seems like forever and there's no clear progression of what needs to or what will happen. Flames Unbound is guilty of having that issue; Vesper doesn't seem to have a concrete goal besides "survive," which is great but there are not really many threats to her. Also, any plot that starts to form in the first half is quickly overridden by the pure smut that fills almost the entire second half.

Now, I can't go into too many more complaints because if I talked about every single one of my annotations, this review would never end. I do, however, want to end on a positive note.
This author has potential. There were scenes from this book that I did enjoy

Spoiler

(Vesper's elixir being drugged by her sister to give her an addiction, the cliffhanger at the end, some of the soulmate stuff, tattoos, etc)

. I don't believe that this book is going to end up being published, seeing as all of the ARCs were recalled, but I really hope that the author picks some concepts and themes out of this book to keep. She could probably keep the worldbuilding and play around with different characters/plots (as long as they're not carbon copies of Violet and Xaden) and people would really enjoy it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free eARC.