Niki's review of House of Flame and Shadow

The reason why I love SJM's books and stories is that the writing is super captivating, you learn about characters through their actions and relationships they have with other characters, sometimes even through small gestures, and characters always feel like a family. Like best friends, you have spent years with and not just a few hours reading about them.

I felt the same about Bryce, Hunt, and Ruhn, I even sometimes felt this about Tharion and Ithan.

So when I started reading CC #3, I made myself croissants, I put on my Ruhn Danaan T-shirt, and I hyped up myself and all my friends... And then 30th Jan came and I dived into the story.

I loved that the crossover part wasn't what we expected - that while we waited for this book, we went overboard with the imagination about how Bryce would interact with our favorite high lord and high lady, with our favorite warriors,... and then we didn't get it. This made sense as SJM said we would be able to read each series as an independent series and for me, this was enough and great. It didn't satisfy my hype... But I wasn't disappointed, I was kinda of impressed she made this move and wrote it like that.

Not to mention the whole suffering and torture of Hunt and Ruhn (and Baxian, OK). Ruhn's suffering literally killed me. I cried and yelled to the Kindle because of his inner thoughts and comments he made out loud. Some scenes were just... really painful. It was like I knew Hunt could take it, but for Ruhn, I always felt he was such a sensitive baby...

40% later I was still super invested in the story... I had some issues with Bryce and how spoiled, stupid, and weird she was acting - but OK - I knew she was in distress because her mate and brother were captured and she felt all this pressure of going back and she made some stupid acts.

But then... Then everything started falling apart.

The writing got worse and worse. There were these repetitive phrases and words that started to annoy me. Feelings and characteristics weren't shown anymore but described in a way where the writer wants to convince the reader to feel a certain way and I just wasn't feeling it. The relationships had weird and uncalled situations for the sake of drama. The resolutions of situations had no proper basis. Everyone got promoted. Things were happening that had no base or no indication of happening. Bryce was getting more and more annoying, egoistical, and unsupportive. Hunt was getting more and more whipped and wiped (sorry, but for real, I spent 1 year defending Hunt for not being the thing that SJM turned him into in this last book). Tharion was even worse than Aedion. Ithan wanted to be Chaol but failed at being even that. Sigrid who? Sathia what? Murder Twins like there is Halloween? Everyone was acting like they were 12 years old. Smut scenes were average at best. Cheezy lines that were out of character. Recycled lines from the previous two books. And watch this: everything was still happening within 7 days. All promotions and characters purification and realizations and trauma solutions in just 7 days. There were so many things bothering me, so many things left unclear and without sense, that I won't be able to list all of them. Page after page something was off, either with plot or with writing or with the way character was acting. To the point that I started questioning if it was really SJM who wrote this.

I kept reading just for Ruhn's and Lidia's sake. For Bryce and Autumn King's banter. For Morven's hilariously stupid comments. And for the hope that I will get ACOTAR and TOG references and appearances. Then slowly I lost Morven, I lost Autumn King, and then I also lost Ruhn and Lidia as they finally merged and even that felt rushed and unfinished and with a million things missing.

90% in I have got this feeling that we will get TOG appearance. I got super excited again. Then, nothing happened aside from an information dump and I was again disappointed and left down.

I cried last 10% of the book. I was pretty sure that the crying came from all the nostalgia and me saying goodbye to the characters (although I think we started saying goodbye to them at 30% of the book as they were not acting the same as in the previous two books at all). Maybe I cried because of the disappointment building in me that I was able to voice out only days after I finished the book. I don't know.

All I know is that I am disappointed. Like really disappointed. Maybe I wouldn't be as much if SJM wouldn't ruin Hunt. I could probably accept ruining other characters, but for Hunt, I will never be able to forgive her (and I am feeling like such a drama queen writing this, but it's true). I feel like Hunt felt after Shahar. Ruined. Good luck bringing me back, Sarah. No amount of croissants, RDTCPOTVF tu tu tu, and Lidia's fanart will help me after this.