The premise was interesting, but I just don’t think that it was executed that well. I didn’t really like the characters: Emma was boring, Sam was annoying, and Jesse barely had a personality. 

Quintessential vampire novel, which I highly enjoyed during this spooky season. The atmosphere was rich with dread, suspense, and underlying homoeroticism. It definitely had some flaws though. The ending felt rushed and the emotions of the protagonist felt underdeveloped.

Really enjoyed reading this book! It was very The Secret History-esque in the sense that the reader starts off knowing the ending, and is led to that point over the course of the story. The setting is very dark academia, which makes it perfect for autumn. The format — a multimedia journalistic investigation into a prep school scandal — framed the story in a really interesting way. The characters were all complex — even when they were unlikeable they were compelling. The complex social politics within Kennedy and the feelings of  depression and otherness that Foster felt as a student there felt very authentically high school, and reminiscent of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

While I’m sure the writing style isn’t for everyone (even I grew tired of the number of words I had to Google!), for the most part I enjoyed the prose. The only issue I had with this book  was the ending — after all of the pages dedicated to fleshing out every little detail of life at Kennedy, I would have appreciated if there were more pages dedicated to life after Kennedy, for both Foster and the other students in his orbit. 

ACOFAS was a nice intermission between ACOWAR and ACOSF. I liked that there wasn't any action or stakes, so the book was able to really focus on the characters and figure out every character's emotional state. I liked the parallels between Nesta being traumatized from the events of ACOMAF/ACOWAR and Feyre being traumatized from the events of ACOTAR. I liked getting to see the angsty side of Cassian.

Somehow, despite the fact that there was no plot in this book whatsoever, it was still more interesting than the last half of ACOWAR.

I originally picked up this book because I was interested in the concept of a secret society of female students at a British university. However, despite being titled “The Maidens”, the book didn’t seem to care much for the female characters that made up the titular group. The characters were all very one-dimensional, with no real sense of personality or motivations. 

This book was marketed as dark academia, but besides the fact that it was set at a university, there weren't any elements of the dark academia sub-genre. The allusions to Greek mythology were clumsy at best and the psychoanalysis was entirely surface-level.

 

The writing style is very blunt, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but which I did not enjoy. I thought that the crossover between this book and “The Silent Patient” was cheap writing. I don’t think I’m ever going to pick up another Alex Michaelides book. 

A Court of Wings and Ruin? More like A Court of Going Places and Doing Things. This book had too many characters, too many side quests, and WAY too much exposition. All of the really interesting plot elements were developed outside of Feyre's narration. Even some of the most climactic moments in the series (for example, Nesta beheading Hybern) happened with Feyre as a spectator, rather than an active participant. Overall, I just did not like the balance between action and exposition.

I did love the beginning of this book, with Feyre in the Spring Court. It makes me wish that Tamlin (the interesting character with interesting motivations) had been the main villain, rather than Hybern (the boring character with no motivations other than being evil and causing problems).

I LOVE FEYRE AND RHYSAND! This book is such a game changer for the romantasy genre. I love the slowburn between Rhysand and Feyre and the dramatic reveal that Rhysand is Feyre's mate. I love the ending, with the dramatic climax in Hybern ending with Feyre as an undercover agent in the Spring Court. This book brought me so much joy! There were moments where I was literally gasping at the plot reveals!

The only thing I don't love about this book is the pacing. It's pretty much impossible to tell where exactly you are in the story because the plot just sort of comes and goes. The middle gets pretty slow too, and for a while it just feels like side-quest after side-quest, leading to nowhere. 

This book had a super interesting premise — two concurrent storylines that diverge with a single choice, which led to a two-in-one romance novel that delivered on both counts! Altogether it was a tad predictable, it totally delivered on giving a happy ending to every thread of the story.