2.5

I don’t know how to feel about this,
I loved Rose of course, she’s literally why I even read the series along with her bond with Lissa. I did feel like Rose matured a lot compared to book 1, which I love because there was less age shaming of older women in this book.
The first half of the book with the banter between the friend group, Christian being dramatic and Adrian being the alcoholic archetype I always have a soft spot for, the reading experience was fun. Even though nothing happened apart from Rose arguing with everyone I didn’t mind that much, I actually enjoyed it. It was sooo easy and quick to read, I haven’t zoomed through a book like this since I first got into the Shadowhunters series.

And then the second half was a let down, it dragged, too much Dimitri who contrary to the popular opinion, I do not like at all, partly owing to the weird age gao I’m sorry but especially in book 1 Rose was so obviously a slightly selfish ignorant child who liked to argue, so I never understood why he liked her beyond the fact that she was bound by rules she had to follow and he had to guide her and she was a kid.
And then the whole Mana club thing was obvious along with the fact that they were the ones who broke the wars like the second Alice the feeder talked about the wards. So the plot was predictable.
And then nothing happened until the last 15%, when the Strigoi attacked the school and it seemed like the author was trying to rush through it. The action scenes were so poorly written. Like ‘here is this old and strong formidable Strigoi, it took two of us to tackle him. But then we did kill him.’ And then it moves on, it was so bad I felt literally no interest in the story, even when Dimitri got turned into Strigoi, which I’m happy happens but was also obvious since they were basically about to have their happy ending when they walked out of the forest hand in hand and it was obvious they’d have to be separated. I only like where the series is heading because Rose entering her Strigoi Hunter era as an adult sounds so iconic and her hunting down Dimitri is just fun. I also liked and felt interest in the argument between Rose and Lissa, it felt like they didn’t have enough scenes together in this book so finally seeing them actually be honest with each other was refreshing. In book 1 I honestly didn’t see Lissa as selfish, just needy but after the amount of growing Rose has done, and finally realizing she wants to put herself first and live for herself was refreshing and it made Lissa come across as slightly selfish to me for the first time which I love.

I know he won’t actually be killed and will probably be healed into becoming a human again once Lissa discovers spirit users can heal Strigoi or something but I kind of wish he was. I also want Lissa to descend into more of an antagonist role throughout the series but idk if that’ll happen.

All in all the first half was the best probably because of Adrian being part of the crew, Rose is my fave, the second half was so lackluster and they really should have handled the Mason ghost plot line thing better because him just disappearing after doing one thing to help them felt like a waste.