There was one blowjob scene I took a screenshot of and sent to my husband, and he was just like “what are you reading?!?!” (he was also very taken aback by the Bridgerton TV show). And I was just not prepared for the sex in this book. I blushed furiously through reading The Captive Prince (though mostly because the sexual tension was, like, really hot). Like, I don’t think I’m necessarily a prude despite my New England Catholic upbringing, but I am definitely pretty vanilla and I don’t read romance or erotica on a regular basis. I did like Cassian as a love interest, though he has major himbo vibes.Īnd OMG you guys, the sex in this book is…….

There’s also that other SJM trope, #squadgoals (which was fine, but predictable), which was also part of the workout plot, so let’s up that to 45% (10% is the human queens/’political intrigue’ plot and the remaining 45% is sex or thinking about sex or thinking about wanting to have sex.

Which shows that they are completely oblivious, or that they’re like “Nesta can’t be having sex with strangers, only with people from our weird incestuous group that we call a family even though most of us have had sex or want to have sex with the others at this point!!!” The ‘plot’ is that the human queens from the previous book are up to something, and they have an alliance with the Autumn Court. Nesta has been drinking and having lots of sex to deal with her trauma, her sisters and friends get mad and send her to train with Cassian.

So this book is pretty much just sex scenes loosely strung together with ‘plot’. Also, apparently there was a threesome scene that was cut?! So I was like, y’know, fine, I’ll read some melodramatic sexy Fae stuff. But when my friend said that SJM had thrown off the trappings of ‘YA’ (more like ‘YA *winkwinkwink*’) and gone full adult in this book, I was intrigued. We had mixed expectations: my friend is not a fan of Nesta, while I found her much more interesting than Feyre. One of the ones that came up was the newest SJM. I’m lucky to have a really good Book Friend (and just general friend) in my city, and we have gone on some pandemic outdoors walks in the snow to talk about books. I’m trying to make this one relatively spoiler free. So I picked a book that I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy, but was pretty sure I would have Thoughts on: A Court of Silver Flames, by Sarah J. I hit a major slump just after Christmas (and in fact, still haven’t finished reading the book I was really into at that time). So, it’s March! And this is my first review! Which tells you a lot about how my reading has been going this year.

A court of silver flames books