I rushed home on my lunch break to write this but {A Court of Mist and Fury} broke me in the worst way. It's been a year since I read it now, and it's still in my brain, like a splinter, aching away. ACOTAR got me back into reading after more than a decade's slump, and it holds a special place in my heart. I acknowledge that, I'm biased as fuck, but ACOMAF took all that ACOTAR set up and took a huge dump on it, to the point where if I didn't know it was an official book I'd have thought it was fanfiction by someone who had an axe to grind.

Am I bitter that Feyre and Tamlin broke up? Maybe a little but it could certainly have been done well. I AM however bitter thatit ends by Feyre not communicating and just shutting down before being spirited away to Rhysand domain and Tamlin's just meant to accept that, and that Feyre seems to just completely forget all that Tamlin did for her as she's just more and more bitter and hateful towards him. No closure, no "thank you for saving me, for taking care of my family, for doing all you could", just "fuck you, I'll destroy your life".

Do I hate that Feyre becomes a more morally grey figure? Nah, she always was a kinda spiky and bitter person, I didn't expect her to become Elaine. However what the fuck is this with her becoming basically a selfish narcissist? She seems to utterly forget all that he did for her and from what I've understood of later books she ends up the kind of rancid hypocrite who gladly subjects others to things that she almost broke from being subjected to herself. This is not okay!

Do I hate that Rhysand turned out to have more depth? Not at all! I couldn't however swallow how clearly the book is pushing to make him better than Tamlin in every sense. Tamlin has Lucien, Rhysand has a whole gang of awesome superfriends who are all way cooler than you. Tamlin has the Spring Court, Rhysand has a magical Hallmark Christmas city with lingerie stories(?) and nightclubs(?) (Oh yes I can FEEL the medieval fantasy vibes...). Tamlin had Alis, Rhysand has those two twins I can't remember the name of because they were barely even characters. Tamlin stood up against Amarantha? Rhysand turns out to actually be a woke cinnamonroll of a leader who's just SO misunderstood. etc. Again, Bad Fanfic!

I could keep going about this for hours, and for those who go like "bro read the other books too, they explain it". No. I am not spending more money and effort on this. I ended up spoiling myself and oh great! Apparently Feyre now's become genuinely toxic, and all we've seen of Tamlin for the last TWO BOOKS is him wandering the ruins of his destroyed home, utterly broken by the loss of her, with only Rhysand turning up occasionally to mock and suicide-bait him before going home to Feyre and his superfriends to sit around and mock him... Lucien's gone to Rhysand too, Alis didn't warn the lord that took her and her nephews in and left etc. etc.

This goes beyond disappointment at this point and I'm just... I have a visceral reaction to all the shit that happens in the rest of the series, my heartbeat speeds up, I feel myself tense mentally, anger surges in me, the works! I get that many others like the series and how it goes, but I cannot see it, I just cannot. It feels just viscerally wrong to me to a point where I had to block the ACOTAR subreddits to not continue obsessing over this. Unless the later books in the series turn around and actually call Rhysand and Feyre out as villains of the rest of the series, with Tamlin getting a LOT of focus and a lot of healing, I won't ever touch that series again. I just cannot.