Reviews

I re read the review I did for the last book and I was right: the ending of this book is a merrier one... In some fronts.

We keep going with the theme of family. We dive deeper into Will's past and we meet the Lightwoods (one of them appeared already in the previous book, but we see them both and how they interact in this one.) Siblings are my favorite thing to read about so I really enjoyed this.

Tessa's walk down feminism keeps at it, this time in small but significant moments.

I really liked a moment when she was the one welcomed (instead of her male companion) and she struggles but ends up making the decision to lead the encounter, by stepping out first and acknowledging the welcomer (a guy she was terrified of in the previous book) by name.

She faces some hard decisions during this one, in the family front and in the love issue.

Now. Speaking of love. There's so many of it here. This is the book of my favorite character, Jem. And we discover the ties within the characters.

Jem loves Tessa. And Tessa loves Jem.

Tessa also loves Will, as we know from the previous book.

And, by the end of this book, we confirm that Will loves her too.

Add to that the parabatai bond: Jem loves Will, and Will loves Jem. They're unconditional (although, I'll take the liberty to argue that this weights heavily on Jem's end: for a chunk of the book Will forgot his existence. To the point that they need to caught up. That non-speaking thing that happens all throughout the book with these two is the main source of the issue, the actual miscommunication, if you get me.) Sophie also gets her comments in this book about that, which go hand by hand with class perspective.

The marital bond also gets the spotlight! That I really liked. Since we're talking bonds, let me mention, once again, that the parabatai bond is explained further in this book too. This is everything the original saga didn't give me: an explanation which is, in turn, accompanied by an example the reader can relate to and understand (I'm convinced Jace and Alec didn't like each other until like... Book four.)

Talking favorites, I loved Jessamine. I think she's such a complex character. Gideon is up there too (less complex, more on my line of morality.)

Overall, I really loved this book. I'm scared to read the next one because I know everything will go to shit.

streganna's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced

4.25

i added a 0.25 more than the first book because it made me laugh several times.

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