This fucking series. The book equivalent of blue balls. Whoever decided that these books are 4 chilli peppers level of spicy clearly has never met a truly spicy book because just, nope. The thing that really frustrated me is that it wasn’t until pg482 of this book (so 866 pages into the series) that our girl Rosalina finally gets one of the fae to finally give her some vitamin D. It started to get really tedious that Rose would end-up in sexual situations with the various fae in the book but for whatever reason, the scene would kinda get abruptly cut off before any p-in-v would happen. The reason for this seems to be rooted in it causing a triggering on the mating bond in the same way that life or death situations can do so (calling it that that is when the mating bond with Caspian triggered, when she almost died in her first encounter with the goblins). I hate this and it feels dangerously close to some less than great ideas about the sacredness of virginity and how p-in-v is the only way to no longer be a virgin or some bs. I don’t think that this was necessarily an overt thing in the minds of the authors when they wrote this book but unpack it a little and that is what is revealed.

Something about the balance of the fantasy and romance plots of these books feels off and I think it comes down to a sense that the romance plotlines are artificially being extended. I think if I was to rework the series I would have made the romance the initial primary focus so the mating bonds for all of the lads would snap in place first and then I would go deeper with the fantasy / conflict elements of the story. I continue to just feel annoyed that as the reader you know that Rosalina has 5 mates (even if the blurbs are trying to tell us that she only has 4) as well as it being seemingly abundantly clear that her mother is the lost queen of the fae. It just feels as though things are being unnecessarily dragged-out for the sake of it. I wonder if I would feel the same if they didn’t get increasingly long for no real greater payoff? I also really don’t like that the cover design of every book tells you who Rosalina will mate with in that book; if you are gonna drag out the romance over 1000s of pages, maybe keep some secrets for the reader? I am kinda hoping that the pattern breaks in book 3 and/or 4 but I think I also just want to see more Caspian.

For all of the issues that I have with these books, I can’t seem to stop obsessively reading them so I guess that is a point in their favour.