This book has SO much good, and at least one serious issue.

I loved Nesta’s character development. In a lot of ways I cannot relate to her as a character and didn’t like her in the previous books. But in ACOSF that changed. After getting more insight into Nesta’s internal world, and watching her development, I actually love her character.

This story runs as a similar narrative to Fayre’s, but as a counterpoint. This is a character who deeply STRUGGLES through her trauma, struggles with her internal fire, and as a result, struggles in building connections to those closest to her.

I think this is an important point about trauma recovery (speaking as someone recovering from major trauma) - we all process things differently. At different speeds. And different people react to healing differently. I honestly think this arc is a very very helpful and well thought out counterpoint to Feyre’s arc - almost like a harmonizing melody. Some people will deeply see themselves and feel validated in Nesta’s process of healing, and that alone makes this plot worthwhile.

About the sex: it’s spicy. Extremely spicy. If you have gotten this far in the series, I don’t know how you’d expect anything else. I’m noticing the majority of negative reviews are about too much sex. If you think this book is going to get less sexy than the rest, you are mistaken. The sex scenes are well written, and for a period of time, the only major “romantic” points in the book (this is also a symptom of some forms of trauma and common for people who struggle with connection). If sex bothers you, and you cant imagine it as a plot device or a viable way to respond to connection issues, you probably aren’t going to resonate with this book. But if you enjoy a sexy, compelling story, you’ll likely enjoy.

Now for the major problems I had with this book (BIG SPOILERS AHEAD):

Fayre and Rhysand…oh god. While they were interesting, multidimensional, sexy, just honestly fantastic characters in the previous books (I will re-read ACOMAF many, many times) they were honestly SO hard to read in this book. I understand that this book was written from the perspective of someone who doesn’t particularly like them, but even their objective actions (and when the book was from Cassian’s perspective) painted them as dull, frustrating, often domineering to the point of being disrespectful, cardboard characters.

And Rhysand was the absolute worst. Coming from someone who loves these characters, loves their arc, relates deeply to Fayre, this arc was deeply disappointing. Honestly I’d rather just forget it happened and go back to ACOMAF.

BIG BIG BIG SPOILER (please stop reading if you haven’t read this book, or if you plan to):

As someone who has had a non-viable pregnancy that could have posed serious risk to me if I didn’t find out in time…I would never, ever forgive anyone who kept me in the dark about it. Ever. And i know many women who feel the same. As an empowering book for young women, it disturbed me the entire time how the characters addressed this situation with Fayre. Especially Rhysand and Madja. I know the ida of Nesta telling Fayre about it was supposed to make the point that women should know the truth, but the way the entire thing went down just felt…so entirely wrong.

It gave me a very Twilight, Breaking Dawn vibe, except worse because at least Edward was honest with Bella from the beginning (and even worse because Fayre and Rhysand are actually well developed characters who I enjoy reading).

I was happy that it all worked out in the end, but the entire time leading up to the resolution just felt so wrong. And Fayre’s reaction to it all just felt…stiff, cardboard, idyllic wife and mother, rather than a truly wholistic person with their own feelings.

All in all, I loved Nesta’s story, loved her arc, loved the Valkyries…and WISH the Rhysand/Fayre situation had been handled in any possible way differently.

I cannot say this enough. This book is solid, I enjoyed it, but I SO wish Fayre and Rhysand had been written differently.

Brand	N/A
Rating	4.8 (177042 ratings)
Price	$0.99
Category	Action & Adventure

A Court of Silver Flames