[NO SPOILERS] // 3.5 // oh... I kinda get it now
(read on audiobook)

This was SO much more enjoyable than ACOTAR. I really was starting to wonder why this series is so popular after finishing the first book which was mostly boring and underwhelming. This book was a HUGE improvement. We had:
- a much more well-developed and enjoyable romance
- a much more proactive Feyre
- the book kept the pace up (unlike ACOTAR which crawled along)
- the characters had downtime but it never dragged because meaningful things where still ocurring (e.g. character development)
- characters that were better developed and more interesting
- I really enjoyed the character dynamics, like it's one of this book's greatest strengths

But it's not all good I'm afraid...
3.5 is a respectable score (especially considering how low I rated ACOTAR) but I couldn't justify rating higher due to some non-ignorable pitfalls:
- sjm's wrting style is still quite repetitive and it still bothers me
- some of the sex-scenes were a bit too gratuitous. I know this is a romance, but it still has a plot and wasting time with sex scenes that aren't really there to progress plot or character relationships seems a bit pointless when there's SO many, some back to back. (that said some of the sex scenes were used really well!)
- So. Much. Exposition. there was a chunk maybe a third in where you get like 4 character's backstories dumped on you and then you get a whole bunch of lore and other world-building heaped on top of that shortly after. It's too much too soon, I even had to rewind my audiobook to replay that section because I literally could not absorb all that info at once.
- Which brings me to: too much telling not enough showing. I don't need to know everything at once, drip feed it I beg you
- If my above points didn't make it clear: this book coulda done with some pruning down to maybe 500-ish pages and not suffered too much. There's even some side-questy stuff that could be trimmed or completely removed tbh.

And lastly... Not a spoiler I promise, but the end happens VERY fast. I know it's leading into the next book, but it's all a bit rushed with six thousand things being revealed at once and zero time to stew in them.

I think I will give at least the last in the original trilogy a shot based on this moderate success. Don't count me as an sjm stan yet, but like I kinda get it.