CRYING COUNTER: 4

I have said it before and I will say it again: if there's one thing Cassie Clare does right, it's character dynamics. The nostalgia factor will also be the death of me.

— overall thoughts: 3.75 —

I do think this book went on for way too long than necessary. There were too many battle sequences, which usually isn't a bad thing, but I feel like it overpowered some of the more important plot points. It dragged for a huge part but I liked the way everything played out.

The strong concepts on family, friendship, and love connects so well with the supernatural aspect and I think is the reason so many people are enthralled with this series as a whole (myself included).

"Parabatai, Kit thought suddenly. In the slump of the young man's shoulders, in his outstretched hands, in the longing stamped on his face, he saw Emma and Julian, he saw Alec as he spoke about Jace;

I just think that CC wanted to do a lot with this book between: concluding TDA while setting up for both TLH and the next trilogy after this. Most shadowhunter books really do have a lot of plot packed into it but this just dragged in the middle. Some parts of the plot got repetitive but in some way it was still different and enjoyable given the conflicts that happen. Sort of like their in the same place but the characters are mentally/emotionally different. Which I think is interesting to read about but gets tiresome when done too much.

I kind of knew who was going to end up with who in terms of romance but Cassie Clare had me doubting at times with how she was writing everything. Going to come clean that there were certain portions that I cared more about every other character except for Emma and Julian, sorry. If this book did not have the amount of references that it did, I probably would have rated it lower. I did absolutely love catching up to the OG shadowhunter squad and the TMI characters.

I have also come into terms with the fact that I enjoy the "older" shadowhunter books in terms of timeline because I think that's where Cassie Clare's strongest in storytelling.

I am very much trash for the characters in this series at this point and if you aren't, I can't promise that you'll love these books but if you are... well we really are in it deep. The plot reveals and character relationships will forever be the core of my appreciation for this series.

↣ A very classic but modern YA setting and if you’re in the mood for that, Cassie Clare never lets down in my opinion (because she doesn’t shy away from the angst). There were still some small inconsistencies in the writing but honestly a book doesn’t need to be objectively perfect to be your favorite, it just needs to be something that you enjoy wholeheartedly. ↢

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“Julian?” “Julian is that you?”

That is screaming TID reference. You know how it was Jem who said “Will? Will is that you?” to Tessa. And like: Jem and Will are parabatais = Emma and Julia are parabatais & Jem and Tessa are romantically involved too = Emma and Julian are romantically involved

Do you guys see the parallelism and foreshadowing