A review by steca2
House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas

adventurous emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I kind of hated the main plot,
having Bryce, Ruhn, and Hunt join the pseudo rebellion to look for Emile and then to find out what Danika knew. It felt forced and while I understand why Bryce and Hunt joined (her complete obsession with Danika and Hunt following her bc he loves Bryce) I didn’t fully understand Ruhn’s motivation to join. I also didn’t love Bryce’s reasoning and obsession. Felt a little like a step back after the closure she had in the last book and in the beginning of this one. Also Hunt’s desire to rebel in the first book is completely ignored in this one. Like where is the guy who tried to buy Synth to rebel again from the first book? If SJM kept that guy around, I would get his involvement with the rebels. It now read like he was just following Bryce along regardless of what he thought or wanted. I also felt like there were too many POVs. I feel like Therion’s storyline with the River Queen/River Queen’s daughter could have been saved for a separate companion novella. Especially everything with the Viper Queen. I never really cared what he was doing - even getting annoyed during his sections - because I was so much more interested in Bryce, Hunt, Ruhn, and even Ithan’s storylines.  The whiplash between POVs definitely caused the book to feel slower. I also didn’t like that Ithan had been harboring this long time crush on Bryce, even after his brother died. I would have liked it more if he yes had the crush while Connor was alive, but once he died and Ithan abandoned Bryce his crush went away. And then once she took him in (which really should have been longer than a weekend), it came back. Also the frat pack bonding so quickly felt a little unrealistic — should have been at least 3 weeks instead of 10 days.
As much as I had issues with the plot, it was still a great book and I definitely plan on purchasing it to reread. It’s clear that there are so many clues and references in the book to build upon THAT ending, so I will likely do a reread once I finish TOG. To be honest though, if  I didn’t love the characters so much I would have rated it lower because I didn’t love the overarching plot.  Also the spoilers on TikTok definitely affected the experience.