Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - A Court of Silver Flames

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

226 reviews

smolone13's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Ratings:

Goodreads: 4/5

Storygraph: 4/5

My Rating: 5/5

Synopsis:

Nesta has an intervention and ends up under Cassian’s care to get better.

My Review:

Since the first book I had drawn attention towards Nesta, as an older sister myself, and at first I did kind of dislike her. I honestly saw Nesta as someone who just didn’t actually care about anyone around her except for herself. But after A Court of Frost and Starlight, I quickly realized that she was going through PTSD. She was traumatized.

Nesta is the prime character of this entire book and it shows how destructive her current lifestyle is. The PTSD, the trauma, and most certainly depression. Nesta sleeps around with other fae males, drinks until she cannot remember the next day, and she isn’t eating. She lives in a disgusting apartment, doesn’t clean up after herself, and doesn’t allow any fireplace anywhere near her to be lit. She doesn’t even take baths. Quickly it is noticed that she is broken. Probably for a long time as well. As seen from the first book, it’s almost like she has given up and the only person that she wraps herself around is Elain. Nesta’s destructive behavior ends up leading her to have an intervention. Feyre and Rhysand, mostly these two, decide it would be best that she lives up at the House of Wind, train with Cassian and work in the library with the priestesses. Although Nesta is pissed off about these turn of events, she goes through with it.

Cassian, the sweet man that he is, does his absolute best trying to get Nesta to join practice. Nesta does well with no drinking, working with the priestesses in the library and does an okay job socializing, just not training. Just when Cassian feels like he won't get anywhere, he decides to change the setting by training at the House of Wind instead of training at the military camp. By a miracle, it works. Cassian helps her gain some confidence, helps give her the push to heal, and honestly it made me fall in love with him as a character. Cassian just keeps his hand held out until Nesta is ready to take it. Cassian also heavily protects her when some of the others are just being dicks. Besides Azriel of course who just minds his own business.

Rhysand was actually one of the characters I started to dislike. The excuse being that Feyre is pregnant. However, I find it ridiculous. Rhysand, as old as he is, including the others don't recognize that Nesta is hurting. Only one to truly notice that is Cassian. The others don't understand why she's destroying herself, including Rhysand who truly believes Nesta has some form of hatred in her to hurt Feyre. Amren as well made me upset, but I also understand that she is technically a new mortal. She has been a being of no feelings for a long time.

Feyre believes Cassian is able to help her and has noticed that she has been improving so she isn’t completely involved. Not to mention, she has been trying to have a successful, safe, and healthy pregnancy. Elain was honestly just useless in this book besides showcasing that she doesn’t want to interact with Nesta. Elain I am almost positive is not as innocent as she makes herself appear and that she is a more hate-filled character than we see. Elain almost strikes me as two-faced.

Now for my two favorite additions! Gwyn and Emerie. I love these two women and they gave Nesta a way to interact, become a stronger woman, and even gain a sense of leadership but also understand teamwork and passing the baton around. Gwyn is a priestess who came to the library after witnessing her twin get beheaded in front of her and then gets gang-raped. Emerie was brutally abused by her father, including the rest of the males in her family, and now runs her father’s shop as a way to distract herself. NEsta, Gwyn and Emerie become close friends and create their own group with other priestesses to become Valkyries, an old forgotten group of female fae warriors. The three of them together made me fall in love with this entire book. They bonded over their hardships, overcame their trauma, and in the end became strong females.

The book had multiple plots. The first plot is Nesta overcoming her trauma and becoming a stronger character. The second was her finally letting go of her fear, being able to openly communicate and finally end up allowing Cassian into her heart. The third was stopping the “young” evil queen from taking over.

I truly did love this book and I completely fell in love with Nesta. I would read this book over and over again. It was comforting, it had some depressing topics within the book, it had suspense, it had adventure, it had the spicy romance and I just could not get over this book. Out of this entire series, this was my favorite book.

Next is The Assassin’s Blade and after that is The Crescent City Series! I absolutely can’t wait to get through these books.

Content Warnings

zoec24's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Too much smut. The plot was a mess-it's more 'oh, hey, here are these random legendary powerful items, find them in 100 pages max pls!'
Nesta should have not needed to use the romance to heal-I liked the sisters better. And the Blood Rite was thrown in. Also, TELL FEYRE ABOUT THE PREGNANCY!!!
And the IC were all horrible to Nesta except Azriel and Cassian. AMREN SHOULD NOT BE MORE COMPASSIONATE THAN MOR!!!

Content Warnings

reading_diaries's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Nesta is so unlikable I want to punch her. She's so defiant and narcissistic that she can't even fathom the concept of empathy and kindness, WHICH EVERYONE ELSE FUCKING HAS GIVEN HER. Cassian is so god damn patient, praise him. Nesta's flaws and lack of accountability are the slow reason why I will forever be a Nesta hater, how do you continuously be a bad person, notice how it's affecting others and still pull the same shit? The fact that she was continuously painting Feyre as the villain when it was Feyre who was always protecting her sisters, feeding her sisters, sheltering them and Nesta still has the fucking audacity to have Feyre pay her rent and while she does absolutely nothing.

Cassian. My man, Cassian. I loved your perspective but homeboy run. The whole relationship was quite toxic and it's annoying how Cassian was ready to break all the rules for her. Risk death for a woman who's been nothing but a bitch to YOUR family that openly welcomed her? No chance my man.

The only good part about this book is

the rite. Nesta, Gwyn and Emerie do what no woman has done before...wow big shock. Realistically, they would have died, for sure. They get months (if that) of practice and then they just fucking survive and beat all the men? Yeah sure okay. While I do like the fact that they have decided to be valkyries and rebuild the female warrior group, I think there's so much sexism in this book that was so unneeded and the plot line would have worked better without it.

Can we talk about the pacing of this book? 20 hours...20 FUCKING HOURS AND THE MOST INTERESTING PART HAPPENED IN THE LAST 20(ISH)% OF THE BOOK?!?!?!?!?!? This book (like all Sarah J Maas) books was comedically too long.. You could have cut this into a 6 hour book and it would have been so much fucking better. There's so much of nothing happening, of repetition that doesn't amount to nothing, of Nesta's annoying fucking personality to warrant 20 hours. Waste of time, thank god I read it on 2.5 speed or else I would have died.

Content Warnings

rachelblair's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

chaos_and_chapters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious relaxing tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Honestly, this was the best book in the entire series. Despite the weak ending I felt this was the strongest and best written book out of all 4.5 ACOTAR books. I really hope the shifting POVs continue with these books, as I think it really helps the plot stand up and justify how ridiculously long these books are.

As always the narrator was amazing, but I think this is her best performance. There was just so much more emotion put into the dialogue AND narration. It really sold me on the story and feelings. Which was important as this book is VERY focused on emotions and how they impact the characters. The exploration of trauma and healthy vs unhealthy coping mechanisms was written better than I anticipated. I also really appreciated the friendship Nesta developed with other women in the book and how that aided her recovery. It’s something that was sorely missing from Feyre’s story.

The relationship dynamics in this book were pretty hit-or-miss for me. I thought Azriel and Nesta had the best written dynamic. I really enjoyed the few interactions they had. And the change of Elaine and Nesta’s dynamic as a reaction to their trauma was also interesting. It didn’t feel out of place. It also allowed for more expansion on Elaine’s character, which I really liked. Aside from that, Cassin and Nesta’s dynamic was fine. I didn’t find it anything special, but I enjoyed the way they played off each other. The rest of the dynamics were pretty lacking, and actually made me dislike the Inner Circle. While Nesta wasn’t the kindest, it was clearly a response to being abandoned by the others. My dislike was further driven by their upset at Nesta being traumatised. Where they were gentle and patient with Feyre, they were short tempered and cruel to Nesta. Again, Nesta wasn’t perfect, but it was because the people that were treating her poorly had abandoned her when she needed community. The worst dynamic was Nesta and Rhysand. While it was pretty strong when they hated each other, their reconciliation at the end was horribly rushed. Especially considering Rhysand’s HORRIBLE actions in the book.

On that note, wow. Mister Your Choice shows his colours by taking away Feyre’s choices. Shocker. I am blown away. Truly. Shocked. It’s not like he’s been doing this, but more subtle the entire series. Honestly, if anyone is still swoony over Rhysand after he WITHHELD MEDICAL INFORMATION from his wife about how she MIGHT DIE is a new low. It’s disgusting behaviour and the fact the book brushed it off and shamed Nesta for telling Feyre the truth is INSANE.

My only other gripes are the spice and end, which just felt very rushed. Along with the wedding, their mating ritual happening so abruptly really threw me. The spice was hilarious, but not on purpose. I really don’t like the way SJM writes spice, so I mostly zoned out during those scenes.

Overall it was a just okay book. Nothing special, but better than the others. I presume due to less Rhysand content.

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florecita_lectora's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

readyforit's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

5⭐️4🌶️(very descriptive scenes)
I went into this book disliking nesta, mostly for her actions in ACOFAS. I think she may be my favorite character now. Rhys (especially) and feyre took several steps backwards in their character development. Maybe feyre was previously an unreliable narrator since she’s in love with Rhys and his mate, but he was nearly insufferable in this book. He kept making horrible call after horrible call. Maybe we only get to really see his failures and shortcomings because of how he interacts with nesta. I don’t think it excuses some of his behavior though.

I had the absolute pleasure of falling more in love with cassian. I did miss mor in this book a lot though.

The Valkyries were the shining star in this book for me, I love their friendship and that they push each other to succeed. Girlhood at its finest. They even made each other friendship bracelets🥹

Content Warnings

calcified_boner's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

I found myself liking Nesta less and less as the book went on. In previous books she had something to her, but now it seems she's gone the same way as literally every other SJM protagonist. She is almost indistinguishable from the horde; another sassy, unlikable-but-not-really, uniquely special and overpowered, faux feminist girlboss who is ultimately beholden to a man.

And the Feyre pregnancy plot was ultimately not enjoyable and plain stupid. (C-sections are a common procedure, are you telling me a society with very advanced magical medicine can't figure out how to chop someone open??) I fail to see how Rhysand is better than Tamlin in any capacity, being that he would have just had her be unaware of the risks of her pregnancy.

Honestly this whole book just felt confused, under baked and unnecessary.

And a personal aside, I just don't particularly enjoy pregnancy plot lines. Abort that thang.

Content Warnings

thatgirldreams's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

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