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

I rarely give 5 stars for anything I review, but the entire book held a tight grip on me. As someone who has witness what PTSD does to a person and as someone with trauma I’m trying to work through as well, Nesta’s journey was incredible to follow. The portrayal of multiple types of PTSD, the different ways of dealing with it, and the reason to overcoming fear that developed from it, all feel realistic and I appreciate it being addressed in a series where a main character, or someone connected to the main character and plot, is severely affected by the events of previous books.
As I mentioned before, there are different ways the characters decide to initially deal with their trauma. Some hide away, some continue their fight alone, and some drown themselves in distractions; and all are also addressed as unhealthy, in varying degrees, ways to cope. It’s clear the message of this story by the end is that you shouldn’t face your trauma or past alone, it’s necessary you be open to overcome. And if you’re only open with people who relate, that’s perfectly fine. It’s okay to rely on others for help, you don’t have to isolate yourself or try to ignore your pain.
There’s even the fact that each character shown starting the journey to regain any sort of semblance of normality starts for different reasons. To prove themselves, to do better in the future, or because their family hopes, and knows, it’ll help them out of blaming and self-loathing to have a sense of purpose.
The relationships (family, platonic, and romantic) all have their own journeys as well and they develop in very realistic ways, especially for a book with a main character who just wants to push all sorts of relationship away.
This is definitely, by far, my favorite of the ACOTAR series and has made Nesta one of my favorite character.

Content Warnings

saintxkathryn's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Nesta‘s story was a compassionate reminder of my own journey in processing and learning to live after many years of trauma and grief. Some of the biggest themes revolved around learning to forgive yourself and learning that many of the things you might blame yourself for, were not your fault in the first place (in a context of surviving trauma and/or abuse). I took comfort in noticing the parallels between Nesta’s and her friends’ healing journeys and my own. This book was actually pretty cathartic for me. Of course, the fantastical elements of the novel were highly entertaining and kept me reading. Maas‘ talent for vivid descriptions and detailed world building make it hard to put this book down. I look forward to her coming works.

Content Warnings

holz_18's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

jaeden_dance's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense 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

I love this book.

Content Warnings

princess_sara_sparkles's review against another edition

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challenging emotional tense slow-paced

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

2.5

Content Warnings

booksemmahasread's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

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

bookboyfriend4life's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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

4.0

Content Warnings

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