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4 stars

"only you can decide what breaks you, cursebreaker. only you."

synopsis:
feyre has returned to the spring court, determined to gather information on tamlin’s maneuverings and the invading king threatening to bring prythian to its knees. but to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit-and one slip may spell doom not only for feyre, but for her world as well.

overall thoughts:
i absolutely adored the beginning of this book. i find tamlin such a fascinating character and i was really interested in the spring court and feyre's manipulating of it. i appreciated that sjm incorporated the struggles and trauma that nesta and elain faced. i love lucien so much and was so glad to see more of him. however, i felt that the battle scenes were underwhelming and poorly executed. it was also one of the most disappointing endings that i have ever read. in general, i enjoyed this book. i did feel that there were many issues worth mentioning, which i will get into later.

characters:
*there may be minor spoilers, but any large spoilers will be covered by a spoiler warning*

feyre:
i thought that feyre was an okay character in acotar and i adored her in acomaf, she had great character development and i really enjoyed her narration. i was dissapointed by her character in this book. i felt like all the trauma and issues she went through in the previous book were overlooked. there were only a few verbal mentions of the ptsd she experienced. and especially because of the fact that i was reading the book from her mind, i was confused by the lack of acknowledgement regarding her past struggles. for example, they are in a small space and feyre tells nesta that she sometimes struggles with small spaces because of under the mountain. in general, i would consider this a great way to display the fact that feyre still struggles with her mental health, except for the fact that it is literally never mentioned after that. overall, i felt as if feyre was a third person narrator and i was not able to connect with her as much as i had in the previous book.

rhys:
i also did not enjoy rhys as a character as much as i used to. that may have to do with the lack of his emotional conversations with feyre. i was frustrated by certain parts where it felt as if sarah was cheating by using the "rhys let me into his mind" trick. like... okay? you went into his mind. but what did you see...? isn't that important? i liked a lot of the side characters more than i did feyre or rhys, and usually when im reading a book i prefer to love the main characters. i did not feel that in this book.

mor:
mor felt like an underdeveloped character. i just did not understand her or why she made certain decisions. in my last review i mentioned i was looking forward to learning more about her and her backstory and i think that whatever sjm had tried to acheive had fallen short. (view spoiler)[and mor's sexuality makes absolutely no sense to me? it was as if sarah just wanted to add extra diversity into her book and tried to throw in a gay character without developing her storyline at all. it was really dissapointing. (hide spoiler)]

cassian:
i love love love love cassian. he is probably my favorite character. i love his depth and feel as if i understood his thought process (even more than feyre, which really says something considering, she was the one narrating lol)

nesta:
i also thought that nesta had a lot of depth and i related to her a lot. i think that cassian and nesta are my favorite ship throughout this series. i cant wait to read acosf!!

elain:
throughout a majority of the book, i thought elain was bland and i dont think her trauma was explained well. i did like what she did at the end though ;)

azriel:
i feel bad for azriel. i really do. i dont think he should be with either elain or mor. he deserves better than them.

amren:
I LOVE AMREN
LOVE HER
SO MUCH

tamlin:
i actually really appreciated his arc in this book and thought that he was more developed here than he was in acomaf. and sometimes... i found myself sympathizing with him lmao. that does not excuse any of his abuse though.

things i liked:
- nesta and cassian
- (view spoiler)[ ianthe's death. its what she deserved. (hide spoiler)]
- varian
- the different high lords and their individual backstories
- helion
- JURIAN
- i love love love love love love the suriel
- the return of the archeron father
- the high lord's meeting. i loved every second of that chapter.

things i didn't like:
- for some reason there was one chapter from rhys's perspective at the end??? i thought it was totally unnecessary and just very inconsistent. like there was literally no point in it.
- i absolutely despise the resurrection trope unless it is handled very specifically. im not going to say who it was used on, but come on! just either kill the character or dont put them in that situation at all.
- (view spoiler)[ the drakon/miryam/jurian stuff. sure drakon and miryam were interesting and somewhat important, but why did jurian need to be involved? (hide spoiler)]
- the battle scenes. sarah j maas excels at banter and characters, but i dont think battle scenes are really her thing.
- this was supposed to be the final book in the first trilogy, and while i think it is okay for authors to leave small hints towards future work in the series, dont be so obvious about it. the ending would have been a lot more satisfactory if she did not leave so many loose threads.
- and lastly, the complete lack of poc representation.

while i did have many criticisms, i did enjoy this book a lot and i would reccommend the series! this was my first sjm series and i think i will definitely be reading more of her stuff in the future.

my reviews for:
book one: a court of thorns and roses
book two: a court of mist and fury
book three: a court of wings and ruin
book three and a half: a court of frost and starlight