A review by bandherbooks
Lady Midnight by Cassandra Clare

4.0

A fun dip back into the world of the Shadowhunters, this time exploring a mystery briefly introduced in [b:City of Heavenly Fire|8755785|City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6)|Cassandra Clare|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389748702s/8755785.jpg|13629068]. Emma Carstairs and Julian Blackthorn are five years older, and have been basically raising the brood of Blackthorn children we met at the LA Institute during Sebastian's war against the Shadowhunters. They are now parabatai, are forbidden from falling in love (see where this is going?), and are also forbidden from investigating or working with the Fae. Too bad they don't listen to any of it.

While quite long (a bit overlong in my opinion), this was really fun. It is your typical Clare-fare; lots of steamy will they or won't they, throbbing loins, deception, and good old battles. I enjoyed the majority of the new characters, and look forward to seeing how this whole parabatai thing plays out. At least it isn't incest this time.

SPOILERS ahead.

SpoilerI have to say, I was super happy Julian and Emma already slept together and that wasn't drawn out for a million pages. We already know that the rest of the trilogy will be a series of pining and lies to keep them apart, and I am interested to see how things go with Julian's brother Mark and Emma and their plan to "fake" fall in love but maybe not really fake? My biggest annoyance was the Annabel Lee plot line, as it felt it was a bit of a stretch, but okay. It was also fun to see our old favorites reappear, but I must have missed when Alec and Magnus adopted a kid (actually two). Must have been in the short stories?