I loved this in spite of his religious nature, maybe even in part because of it. I love the way he sees the world and all its sharp awfulness, but can still appreciate the beauty of a quiet day. The poem "Questionnaire" gave me chills and reminded me of Sylvain Neuvel's novel The Test.

More nature/life poems than the love poems I like, but Rumi is always lovely.

I officially hated Meghan on page 82 when she thought she saw her brother through a window and chased after him without waking Puck or thinking literally at all.

I officially hated Kagawa's writing on page 90 when she tells me that Meghan has ridden a horse once in her life but this experience is the most terrifying horse ride in the world. First of all, this is not relevant or interesting, second of all, if she's done it once, her opinion doesn't matter. Same on page 107. I'm told Meghan is a strong swimmer but then she almost drowns. I can't trust anything Kagawa or Meghan tell me because it's just immediately contradicted.

And on page 196 she doesn't let Grimalkin speak for her because she says she's afraid he'll barter her firstborn without her consent. Oh, you mean the only character who has done anything at all for you, include save your life multiple times and try and teach you magic and has treated you better than your actual mom, is trying to help you save your stupid brother and you really think that you can outwit a fairy better than he can? Meghan is literally the definition of too stupid to live.

I also hate that "Robbie" has been her friend for years but she just starts calling him Puck no problem. This is just a pet peeve of mine, I hate character name changes.

Am I really supposed to believe that an average teenager can hike for days on end without sleep and then climb hundreds of stairs without getting winded? This is just silly. The story wouldn't change at all if the pacing was sped up. She also gets knocked unconscious three times, so if I didn't think she was brain-damaged before I definitely think so now.

I do like that the bad guys are iron fey. That was a really cool new twist I haven't seen before, and 90% of the reason I finished this (the other 10% was to see what all the fuss about Ash was about, I won't lie).

I think I'm just way too old for this book, because I didn't care about literally any of these idiots. I would have taken the Iron King's deal to be his queen and keep Ash as my sex toy so fast that both their heads would have spun. So.

Dozens of pages of Meghan being an idiot over Ash because she literally can't comprehend that him having feelings for her puts them both in danger.

Oberon sweeping in to save her but because she made a deal to go to the Winter Court, he just leaves her. But then 50 pages later she justifies wanting to go back to the mortal world by saying she never promised to stay in the Winter Court, just go there. If that were the case, then Oberon could have taken her home and all of this could have been avoided. So, more bad writing from Kagawa.

I know the whole point of the first book was saving her brother, but it's really lame that this book is about defeating the second iron king. I don't even care if she beats him or not, because I assume they'll just keep making more (a point Grimalkin makes as well, yet another instance of Kagawa pointing out her own poor plotting without doing anything about it).

Also, I love a good love triangle, but making out with Puck because she's sad about Ash just makes me hate Meghan even more. That's not a love triangle, that's just being a shitty friend.

And at the end, she calls Ash the Winter prince. Like, I appreciate you being dramatic, but he was disowned for being a traitor so he's definitely the prince of nothing.

This book is so poorly formatted; half the time I couldn't tell if it was the same poem with a paragraph on each page because each poem does have a title, or if not every poem had a title and sometimes they did start on new pages.

She used the phrase "this is love" in practically half the poems, and each use was more eye-roll-inducing than the last.

She used the word mouth more than a dentistry textbook.

This was just beyond insipid.

Why is there religious crap in here all of a sudden? All this ranting from Ash about not having a conscience because he doesn't have a soul makes me want to put cigarettes out on my own face. Even if I didn't think he was a piece of shit before, I definitely do after hearing how he tormented a girl so much that she starved herself to death.

And of course Meghan does nothing, just bangs him anyway without even questioning if maybe she's an absolute moron for being with someone so fucked up.

Grimalkin is the only character worth a damn and every time Meghan was rude to him I wanted to slap her.

I'll give Kagawa this, though, that was a damn good ending. I'm glad she was her own person and didn't have Ash, as horrified as I am by the thought of someone that idiotic ruling over anyone.