A review by smolone13
A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

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.

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