A review by happy_bookish_heart
Court of Vines and Vipers by Emberly Ash

4.0

Okay, so overall I liked this book a lot. That said, I did have somewhat mixed feelings about it. 

On the one hand, it took me a while to get into. The pacing in this book was slower than the first two. The first 20% dragged for me to the point that it wasn’t holding my attention and I was losing motivation to read. The main couple was separated for about 35% of the book which I didn’t love and then only to be met with an amnesia trope that they deal with for the majority of the book…which, again, I didn’t love. It was definitely a more emotional book and they are dealing with some heavy stuff, but Veyka’s inner monologue got a bit tiresome for me because it became so repetitive. I didn’t find Cyara’s POV to be very necessary to the storytelling, but I didn’t mind having it in included. 

On the other hand, I think this one may have been the strongest book in the series so far. It was a more emotionally impactful book (which is something I appreciate because I love a book that makes you feel).  I definitely teared up a few times. I felt myself more invested in the story and the relationship once things picked up around the halfway mark. The world-building and plot continued to expand and develop and we learned more about the prophecy. While Veyka’s inner monologue got a bit tedious at times, her character didn’t annoy me as much in this one! I liked that the main couple wasn’t as hyper-sexualized in this book because it allowed me to focus more on the actual story rather than having the spice be distracting from the plot as it had been in the first two books. It felt like there was a better balance in this book between plot, romance, and spice. While I don’t love the amnesia trope, I did appreciate that it kept the romance from getting stale (as many fictional couples tend to do after being mated/married, etc.). 

Similarly to the last book(s), I still rolled my eyes with some of the lustful comments/thinking, but it wasn’t as frequent or distracting in this book. I still cringed with the use of “p*ssy” and “c*nt” which generally just aren’t my preferred word choices for those types of scenes. That’s not really a critique of the writing, more just a misalignment between the writing style and my personal preferences. 

Again, there were numerous typos and grammatical errors throughout the book which didn’t bother me too much, but I know that’s the type of thing that would bother some readers so hopefully those got ironed out by the final released copy. 

Despite my critiques, I will point out again that this book was probably my favorite in the series so far! I’m interested to see how the story will conclude when the next book releases in the Fall! 

Thank you to Emberly Ash, NetGalley, and Victory Editing for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!