I’ve been holding off on this review for a while now because I just don’t know what to say. Like you know when you read a book that you connect with on a super deep level, and words are just too little to express it? Le sigh.
However, the Wrath and the Dawn was spectacular and I had almost no arguments. I guess I can recommend this to my mother and then be proud of my heritage. Then I will somehow find a way to tell my mum that I ransacked her closet to get her jewelry and traditional clothes. Well, I ambushed my closet as well. The book photo shoot in the end, was still very fun. Salwar here, ghagra choli here, SHOWER EVERYTHING WITH JEWELRY BASICALLY. *minimal spoilers follow*
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda is honestly the cutest book I’ve probably read. And it’s so cute, because it was ridiculously normal! I mean, even in contemporary now there’s all sorts of different characters with their own piques and individualities, but Simon is just normal. Perfectly normal, surrounded by normal kids and normal people (see how I differentiated kids from people there aye). But normal is complicated, and that’s why this book was the cutest normal of ever.
She was the heir of ash and fire, and she would bow to no one.
Celaena Sardothien has survived deadly contests and shattering heartbreak—but at an unspeakable cost. Now she must travel to a new land to confront her darkest truth…a truth about her heritage that could change her life—and her future—forever.
Meanwhile, brutal and monstrous forces are gathering on the horizon, intent on enslaving her world. To defeat them, Celaena must find the strength to not only fight her inner demons but to battle the evil that is about to be unleashed.
The king’s assassin takes on an even greater destiny and burns brighter than ever before in this follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Crown of Midnight.
-Goodreads
I am so behind on my reviews; I’m sorry. In truth, I did not just finish this book, I finished Sheen of Quadows* this month and so I’m not as behind on the actual reading of the series as you may think! The Throne of Glass saga has been such a beastly thrill ride, because I originally put down #1 because the size of the book was so daunting but then all my motivators up here were screaming their heads off for me to continue, and so I did. AND I LOVED ALL OF IT SO MUCH!! I need Rowan to be mine and I need to next book WITHIN THREE SECONDS.
*Um. I sort of told you little popcorn kernels that I would keep saying Sheen of Quadows instead of Queen of Shadows to confuse all of you! And also Sheen of Quadows sounds like ducks, because, you know. Quack. And Herondales hate ducks. I am so ironic. On purpose.
And continuing with the quote thing, can I first say, OH CHAOL. OH MY GOODNESS CHAOL. AND NEHEMIA. OH MY HEART ACHES FOR YOU CHAOL. And I’m pretty sure you’ll find out what that means later on, but yeah. Once you, you know, read the book.
“I worry because I care. Gods help me, I know I shouldn’t, but I do. So I will always tell you to be careful, because I will always care what happens.”
Can I PLEASE cry? Chaol cares for Celaena. So gods help me, I know I shouldn’t, but I claim you, Chaol Westfall. And if you’ve read Heir of Fire, you’ll get what I mean. You’ll also shrivel up and die. Just warning you. This is beautiful. This is a symbolic dialogue of the relationship between Chaol and Celaena. It’s hearty, true, deep, and beautiful. It is the idol of how all heartfelt relationships should be. And doesn’t that give you a character insight on Chaol? About how sweet he is? And about what type of a person he is? And about he’s MINE? I’m joking. Maybe.
“The rest of the world quieted into nothing. In that moment, after ten long years, Celaena looked at Chaol and realized she was home.”
Chaol. I sort of hurt. Can you stop being so sweet and heartbreaking? Look at Celaena’s thoughts, okay? I don’t want to just share this with you, but I want you to look at the writing style and understand how deep this goes. It’s not just “You mean a lot to me.” Or even the most thrown-around, shallow thing that now has lost its once deep value “I love you.” This goes way beyond that, and look at how the writing makes you understand that! Can you ever imagine telling someone, that after so long, you’ve figured out that your home is with them, in them? Can you IMAGINE? It’s so deep and passionate, that “I love you.” would never be able to do this justice.
“Why are you crying?”
“Because,” she whispered, her voice shaking, “you remind me of what the world ought to be. What the world can be.”
Look. I will end up crying half way through this review. I’m sorry, it’s going to happen, and it’s sort of unavoidable. More between Celaena and Chaol awaits you. I keep bringing you these quotes between them, I know, but they have so much behind them I can’t do much but HAVE to share them with you. There is a question here. It’s not figurative language. It IS character development, Celaena’s outlook on the world and her surrounding people is growing and changing. The question is asking, “What should the world be?” It’s leaving so much space for involvement and thinking and fangirling and melting (don’t ask where that came from, I know as much as you).
So you tell me. What should the world be?
“Some things you hear with your ears. Others, you hear with your heart.”
So obviously right now my heart is hearing some seriously awesome stuff about Sarah J. Maas. But.
LIFE. THIS. IS. LIFE. And seriously, ALL of these people are bae. Deal with it. This is something I just want to share with you now. This is such a profound saying, I can’t even express how much this means. And this doesn’t just apply to hearing stuff. The second quote in this review? Hear it with your heart. It makes a difference and it makes you understand it more. I could change this up and say, “Some things you see with your eyes. Others, you see with your heart.” I’ve had conversations about this very heavily with people, and I only hope you understand the beauty of this, and how it allows you to fill in the gaps and picture all the plot and setting possibilities.
“Roland gave her a courtier’s smile. “And what sort of work do you do for my uncle?”
Dorian shifted on his feet and Chaol went very still, but Celaena returned Roland’s smile and said, “I bury the king’s opponents where nobody will ever find them.”
AGHHHH. I die. Celaena makes me laugh so hard! Just look at this banter, look at her wittiness, and look at how smart she is! Clever girl! Doesn’t that make you almost sort of make you want to read the book? To read more about these hilarious characters and beyond this deep plot and into this beautiful writing? I hope it does. BECAUSE AHAHAHAHAHA I AM DYING OF LAUGHTER. Yea. That was real. Me laughing. Miracles, you hear, [with your heart 😛 ] miracles.
“Enough! We have enough enemies as it is! There are worse things out there to face!” Celaena slowly turned to him, her face splattered with blood and eyes blazing bright. “No, there aren’t,” she said. “Because I’m here now.”
I’m slightly scared. Look, I admire, I fear, and I respect Celaena and her character and who she is, but she is WHOA. In this book, she goes way past what you could ever imagine. In ALL WAYS. And that’s why I loved this book so much. Because you expected a lot from Throne of Glass, and when you come to this book, it’s just a punch to the face, because it goes way further than what you imagined. It prepares you wholly for the next book and the twist at the end is so deep and so unexpected and so detailed and so INTERESTING that you will end up loving it just as much, if not more, than I did. So read it please. You shalt love it forever and ever. Thou shalt not ever read a book again should thou not read Crown of Midnight.
So, see, I loved this book so darn much and I’m praying you read the flipping thing, because I want you to read it and then melt with me. And might I gently remind you, no matter what happens in whatever book or who says what, CHAOL IS MINE. CHAOL DID NOTHING. CHAOL IS INNOCENT. And in the end, Chaol is beauty, inside out.
“Nothing is a coincidence. Everything has a purpose. You were meant to come to this castle, just as you were meant to be an assassin.”
When magic has gone from the world, and a vicious king rules from his throne of glass, an assassin comes to the castle. She does not come to kill, but to win her freedom. If she can defeat twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition to find the greatest assassin in the land, she will become the King’s Champion and be released from prison.
Her name is Celaena Sardothien.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her.
And a princess from a foreign land will become the one thing Celaena never thought she’d have again: a friend.
But something evil dwells in the castle—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying, horribly, one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival—and a desperate quest to root out the source of the evil before it destroys her world.
-Goodreads
AGH! WHY. WHY DID I NOT READ THIS EARLIER?! Journey with me, bookworms, across my treacherous journey of fangirling, and melting in the ultimatum of all puddles, MY FEELS!!!!
OH THE FEELS!!!!
So! I’ve decided that this book is one heck of a thrill ride and I cannot conveniently review it for you without referring to the book with a vigor that you’ll find I can only achieve through lemon meringue pie. And so, what I hear, is that if you offer me lemon meringue pie, then I will review this book while eating it. No pun intended. Oh, forget that.
“No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.”
Just to let you all know, this book has a heck of a lot of profound sayings, along with the others. Kay? Gotcha. Great. The writing style is flawless and me being possibly the biggest bookworm to ever exist, I APPRECIATE THIS!!! Is it obvious? Can you tell? I like how in-depth and realistic the characters are. They’re not heroes or idols–they’re just people like you and me, living their own life story. I love how Maas incorporated all the realistic elements of an everyday (possibly more interesting) life beautifully, without infodump or too much rage across one page, blah, blah, blah, blah, for ten pages. It constantly held my attention and was absolutely thrilling!
“Names are not important. It’s what lies inside of you that matters.”
Amen, sister. So I love to write, let me tell you. And when I’m writing, I spend a lot of time looking for the perfect name to suit my character, but just recently, I realized that it doesn’t matter whatever name I write with, because my character will grow into the name and all will be beautiful. The deep message this quote sends gives you a hint about the plot, the setting, and the writing style. It makes your mind work to figure out what’s going on, without revealing it straightforwardly! Clever, huh? AKA awesomeness.
“We all bear scars… Mine just happen to be more visible than most.”
Yet another beautiful, profound saying! This is what I mean by realism! HECK, man. HECK. The rawness of that statement, saying outwardly that the character is not perfect–GAWD. It’s beautiful, and it’s and open door, letting you imagine what you want. I imagine you’re interested in knowing what’s behind this? Here’s a little peek for you behind this quote.
Celaena Sardothien is a notorious assassin. YES A BOOK ABOUT AN ASSASSIN REVEL IN THE GLORY WITH ME OH MY FRIENDS. She is an assassin and after the brutal torture and death of her lover, she is captured and taken to a labor camp that is meant to kill you. She is whipped. She is tortured. She is broken. She is in A DEATH CAMP until the Crown Prince takes her to fight as his Champion, or his input in the bet.
GLORIOUSNESS.
“Of course.” He picked up the brown bag of candy on the table. “What’s your . . .” He trailed off as he weighed the bag in his hands. “Didn’t I give you three pounds of candy?”
She smiled impishly.
“You ate half the bag!”
“Was I supposed to save it?”
“I would have liked some!”
“You never told me that.”
“Because I didn’t expect you to consume all of it before breakfast!”
She snatched the bag from him and put it on the table. “Well, that just shows poor judgement on your part, doesn’t it?”
I can guarantee that almost all of you will love the characters. CELAENA SARDOTHIEN, MOST DEADLY ASSASSIN AND PERSON IN THE LAND LOVES CHOCOLATES AND CANDY AND FANCY DRESSES. Make it real, thank you! All of her brilliant, witty remarks got me cracking up, and I warn you, Celaena will sass everyone she comes across. It is the most amusing, enjoyable thing I’ve ever read. Two things: CANDY. And “She snatched the bag from him and put it on the table. ‘Well, that just shows poor judgement on your part, doesn’t it?’
I LOVE THIS! I AM DYING! I AM DYING IN GLORY AND I. WANT. MORE.
“You have the skills,” Chaol said, “but some of your moves are still undisciplined.”
“That’s never stopped me from killing before,” she spat.
Chaol chuckled at her agitation and pointed his sword at the rack, allowing her to get to her feet. “Pick another—something different. Make it interesting, too. Something that will make me sweat, please.”
“You’ll be sweating when I skin you alive and squish your eyeballs beneath my feet,” she muttered, picking up the rapier.
“That’s the spirit.”
She practically threw the rapier into place, and drew the hunting knives without hesitation.
My dear old friends.
A wicked smile spread across her face.”
Can I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh? I love her spirit! I do! Chaol, my man, Captain of the Royal Guard, you go dude! I love you! AND ANYONE TRY TO STEAL HIM I WILL BASH YOUR HEAD IN. The book is notoriously funny and it’ll keep you hooked on it, for there is never a moment when you are not tense and don’t want to stick your head between the pages, or you are laughing and possibly making all of your family members and friends considering the fact that you are insane. Which is probably true, no offense.
There is so much character input in here if you look at it! There is so much characterization going on, with the dialogue, being so detailed you can imagine what’s going on, and it just adds more to the depth of these amazing characters! I honestly CANNOT fathom how to express the amazing awesomeness of this book to you.
“He won every game, yet she hardly noticed. As long as she hit the ball, it resulted in shameless bragging. When she missed – well, even the fires of Hell couldn’t compare to the rage that burst from her mouth. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d laugh so hard.”
The swearing in the book, as well as some other references are a bit harrowing but are amusing and really light, and that gives you a better ideal of your character as well, don’t you think?! Look at this quote? Are you not laughing your head off? Between the Crown Prince Dorian WHO IS MY PROPERTY HE IS MINE BACK OFF and Celaena’s endless banter, it’s a laughable, light outlook! And super fun to read. They’re playing a pool hybrid and it’s amusing to see Celaena’s drive and passion and determination! GIRL. YOU GO.
“Libraries were full of ideas–perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
I want so badly to tell you this is the last quote, but I have two more after this. So bear with me. This is a beautiful quote. I can tell Maas is a bookworm too, because I love the appreciation of books here. CELAENA IS A BOOKWORM. CELAENA IS AWESOMENESS. I love how Maas twisted all the most simple things in life to make us look at them in a different light. Look at how she changed our perception of libraries and ideas! Her writing is flawless and raw, and it is the most time-passing thing you would ever want to read.
“You could rattle the stars,” she whispered. “You could do anything, if only you dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.”
I WOULD LIKE TO CRY. MINIONS, GIVE ME A HANDKERCHIEF PLEASE. This is the deep stuff, man. The deep stuff. This book not only carried great characters, a great plot and setting, and beautiful writing, but it carries SO MUCH AUDIENCE VIGOR. There is so much here in the book that Maas wanted YOU as a reader to carry on and understand, and it’s the most beautiful I thing I swear I’ve ever read. You can understand so much, and feel so much, with this simple statement. Is determination, it is imagination, and it is confidence, that are all depicted like heck right here. Pardon me while I go die. Or cry. Or both.
“How long was I asleep?” she whispered. He didn’t respond.
“How long was I asleep?” she asked again, and noticed a hint of red in his cheeks.
“You were asleep, too?”
“Until you began drooling on my shoulder.”
HA HA HA HA HA. That was a real laugh. That was not me mocking you laughing. Not at all. This is funny. Admit it. It is funny and you want to laugh. This is realism right there. Look at the banter between Celaena and Chaol! Celaena is a real person and she is not a perfectionist. She is not an angel. She is a person and Maas writes like it. OH AND I LOVE CHAOL WESTFALL SO GO AWAY. Chaol is my bae. Along with Dorian and ROWAN and Aedion and the likes. Oh, my minions, you shall find out. This book made me laugh so much and I loved it! I LOVED IT! So go read it. Right now.
All in all, this was a beautiful, passionate book with such a great plot, better than any I’ve read this year, and I want all of you to read it and back off because Chaol and Dorian are mine and my best friends and if you say anything more I may take to the likes of Celaena and end up declaring war on you. Or, if I recall correctly, “squishing your eyeballs under my feet”. Pardon me.
In the magical underworld of Victorian London, Tessa Gray has at last found safety with the Shadowhunters. But that safety proves fleeting when rogue forces in the Clave plot to see her protector, Charlotte, replaced as head of the Institute. If Charlotte loses her position, Tessa will be out on the street—and easy prey for the mysterious Magister, who wants to use Tessa’s powers for his own dark ends.
With the help of the handsome, self-destructive Will and the fiercely devoted Jem, Tessa discovers that the Magister’s war on the Shadowhunters is deeply personal. He blames them for a long-ago tragedy that shattered his life. To unravel the secrets of the past, the trio journeys from mist-shrouded Yorkshire to a manor house that holds untold horrors, from the slums of London to an enchanted ballroom where Tessa discovers that the truth of her parentage is more sinister than she had imagined. When they encounter a clockwork demon bearing a warning for Will, they realize that the Magister himself knows their every move—and that one of their own has betrayed them.
Tessa finds her heart drawn more and more to Jem, but her longing for Will, despite his dark moods, continues to unsettle her. But something is changing in Will—the wall he has built around himself is crumbling. Could finding the Magister free Will from his secrets and give Tessa the answers about who she is and what she was born to do?
As their dangerous search for the Magister and the truth leads the friends into peril, Tessa learns that when love and lies are mixed, they can corrupt even the purest heart.
-Goodreads
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Eleanor & Park.
A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love.
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan…
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
“Touching and utterly real.” — Publisher’s Weekly
Fangirl is an excellent story that is incredibly realistic and is very inspirational! I loved it very, very much. I have read Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell as well and I am just as, if not more, stunned with Fangirl as I was with Eleanor and Park. Another thing I loved about this book is the diversity. It travels out of the original box of ‘romance’ and it is definitely unique. There are just about a hundred thousand cliches in the story, not to mention the humongous trope the whole story revolves around. And that’s okay! It works in this case. The trope is looked at in a different perspective and you definitely notice the cliches and you won’t mind them!
The characters in Fangirl were totally unique and interesting.
I definitely liked Cath because of her vivid, unique, detailed personality which was easy to become attained to throughout the narration (in her voice). The way she talked and her thoughts really spoke to me and very perfectly depicted the mind of a college girl. Cath cared very much about her father and was pretty much a girl completely immersed into the world of books, of Simon Snow.
And that brings me to talk about Simon Snow. Oh, *squeal* give me a fangirling moment. Simon Snow is practically a Harry Potter parody that you get bits and pieces of in Fangirl and is much more elaborated on in Rowell’s Carry On that is so on my TBR. The only topic in Simon Snow is that, well, I warned you. There is a vampire in secret, Baz, and there is the ‘Chosen One’ Simon. The boys are roommates in Watford School of Magicks and Baz and Simon are. Well. Um. Involved. Together. If you know what I am implying. ‘Nuff said.
Levi and Reagan and Nick and all of Cath’s other college mates were each to their own, with their own story. The one thing I didn’t like is that Levi is practically your perfect male ‘dreamboy’ that every story has. Ugh. We need diversity! Enough with the blue-eyed, toned, tall hunk of pure idiocy! Give us readers something different, please. Anyways, aside from me not liking Levi, I liked all of the other characters a lot because of all of their depth, unexplained complexity, and the space Rowell left for us to fill in the blanks making the story easier to connect to!
The plot was something. Something. It was calm but it was unnerving and it was real and it was totally attached to a story of someone in college. I loved the realism and I loved how the plot made everything so completely detailed. The plot and all of the events were very relatable.
The story perfectly depicted the very real threat of peer pressure and how contagious the obsession with drugs and drinking can get in college. As we all learn in school from all of our teachers and principles, ‘don’t do drugs! stay drug-free! avoid alcohol!’ Fangirl showed how real all of that is. And that is zilch. When college students are given the freedom to do what they want, they react negatively to peer pressure that supports drugs and alcohol use and students fall for that. I liked how Rowell was very real with the pressure and the danger of all of these drugs and alcohol greatly advertised in college. The plot was hard and it fought all of these realities, making them even more scarier and realistic.
There was SO MUCH bad language used in the book. Oh, whoops. SO SO SO SO much. And I liked it better in Fangirl than I did in Eleanor and Park. Though bad language used that frequent is a downside for me in novels, I liked this because in college, not everyone is all perfect and orally angelic. People don’t use great language all the time in college! And the use of bad language was what really hit that realism for me! And I thought that this was the best novel I could have ever read because of how realistic Rowell was able to make it. A very good job to you, dear Mrs. Rowell.
The world-building was like every other book. Enough to see from the protagonist’s perspective, but not all that much to explain everything to us. However, the use of street names, campus names, city names, and state names came in handy with all the navigation going on.
There is a trigger warning in here about the danger of drugs and alcohol and other involvement in college and I do hope you know what I mean. And so the world-building proved to be, well, scarce but enough. And why I referred to the trigger warning is below.
There is a part where one of the characters gets over intoxicated and is in need of being admitted to the hospital, and the world-building and the details fit in every place right then. There was so much description going on in that moment of tension! It was pretty easy to picture all of it, except for those little tiny details.
Writing style, hmm? Oh, what do I say? Rowell always nails it when she uses the bad language. But she made it better here, if that’s possible. I told you about how it made out so much more realistic. And therefore with all of the swearing in tow in this novel, Rowell fit it in like the perfect puzzle piece with the story and the moral.
And so the moral of this great story is facing the growth that happens when you go to college. The real hardships, pressure, influence, and everything else that proves a challenge in life through those four years of undergrad were a story I know I will never forget the meaning of. I will never forget the hardships, the characters, the solutions, and the bittersweet story that revolves around it all.
I would definitely recommend this novel to all voracious readers who want to explore outside of their limits into the world of YA contemporary. And if you just want a good read, this is your story! It kills time and has a great meaning and was very inspirational and effective for me and I would love for you to read it. And if you want to do some fangirling about that Harry Potter parody, you know who’s always here for a bit of that. 
