I was actually this close to chugging the book away and never pick up a fictional book again. It wrecked havoc on my emotional stability and absolutely destroyed me. I was furious, devastated, sometimes I did feel empty myself which is worse. At some point I wanted to give it a one star rating, just out of spite.
But alas... It's bloody brilliant. And while I love the second book most out of these three books, this one has also carved itself a place in my heart, it was bloody painful and brought me damn near to my limits but the spot is deserved.
The characters Maas has created are so... deep and feel so real - not necessarily as faes but their individual character trades - that I already feel myself floundering with the loss of them. (not for too long, I have 4.1 ahead of me and in a couple months the fourth part of the series) I am seriously impressed how utterly wholesome parts of ACOMAF and ACOWAR felt; mostly because the emotional trauma Feyre and the others experience is not swept under the rug or just does not exist but rather displayed and it is given the necessary room to show that healing is bloody painful and that it takes time and that you need to work on yourself, learn to accept yourself. I think that is what makes it a game changer for me. Yes, the plot and its twists are so well planed and written that this alone would justify five stars... But seeing the emotional and psychological healing and this model relationship. What Rhys and Feyre have. That's next level stuff. Like serious, emotionally supportive relationship stuff. And it feels like my standards, that were already way too high thanks to other relationships I had the pleasure of reading about, just skyrocketed.
Thank you, Sarah J. Maas, for this really spectacular journey with this beautiful strong female protagonist and her equally strong supportive not too mention ridiculously handsome partner in crime and all there friends and family. I get the hype, fully. I support it. Many more should read it.