I was surprised at how much I liked this one. This has been a BookTube/BookTok darling for a bit, and I've been disappointed many times by the very hyped books, and I don't like YA. But Holly Black had been a Guest of Honor at ICFA, so I decided to trust people. And I was pleasantly surprised. It was a lot of fun. The stakes of the book rose at a normal pace; the characters were believable in their actions; the fae were appropriately terrifying and weird and capricious. It was actually a really good book and I already put the second one on hold at my library. 

I'm not trying to be shady here, but I was really expecting this to be like someof the other faerie smut genre based on what people on the internet were saying. So when this had a pretty compelling plot with interesting characters I was surprised but also pleased. I don't really like DNFing books, and it is particularly difficult to DNF really popular books like these. 

I hope Jude goes darker in the upcoming books. I want to see parallels between her and Jia from the Dandelion Dynasty. Someone who is willing to make herself the villain so that someone else can be the hero. A true morally gray character. We don't have enough of those.