2020 ( )

The series truly has been run into the ground for me. Where do I even start with this book? I should begin with the extreme repitition, everything we have already gone over a hundred times in the other books is gone over a hundred more, for example.

Ash: I love Seth but I know I should be with you for our court.
Keenan: You need to make a decision. I love Donia but I wanna do you, for the good of our court.
Ash: But it's soooooo hard.

Keenan: I actually love you Donia but we can't be together because I am the Summer King so I need to do the Summer Queen.
Donia: I hate myself for loving you. But I will be here whenever you want a booty call.

This irritating love-quadrant has been going on since the beginning and then halfway through this book. And then, it turns out, Keenan didn't HAVE to be the bloody Summer King and could instead be a Winter fey and thus actually be with Donia and allow Ash to be with Seth therefore making this whole bloomin' scenario a waste of time! Why didn't he just do that after the first 1000 rejections from ASH!!

The entire book felt completely stale to me, and maybe it's becuase I am not a tween but the teenage behaviour of not only the human/fey teenagers, but the CENTURIES old fey as well was pathetic. I felt like telling them all to grow up.

And then it ended in its pointlessness. ( )

This one didn’t grab me like the others in the series. After I hit the halfway point, there were some great moments, and I was happy with the endings, although I’m still not sure I understand the whole Leslie/Niall/Irial relationship… But I thought the first half was very scattered and repetitive. I liked how she did the books in this series, featuring and developing minor characters every other book, but it seems like it snowballed into too many for the last book, with too many points of view and too many stories to wrap up.
And what’s up with keeping Seth in a cage for half the book? Really? What was all the fight-training and fairy-becoming if he was just going to be packed away while everyone else fought?
I like Melissa Marr’s imagination, and I’ll read more of her books, but this one wasn’t my favorite in the Wicked Lovely series.
( )

A wonderful, pitch-perfect ending to this great faerie series. I was left with the perfect mixture of sadness that it was over and joy that I was leaving the story satisfied that everything was going to work out all right.

After months of bloodshed, betrayal, and power shifts, the faerie courts are at last ready to enter into pitched battle with the mad queen of Discord, Bananach. There have been too many deaths, too many divided courts, and too many torn monarchs; something has to give. And lots of things do give in this novel...but that doesn't mean that their breaking is a bad thing.

The Summer King Keenan is searching for allies and preparing to lay down an ultimatum that will change his court forever, while his queen Aislinn struggles to inhabit the mantle of a true Summer ruler. Once-mortal Seth is pulled in every direction, realizing for the first time what being so many things to different courts truly entails. The Winter Queen Donia tries desperately to veil her emotions under a mask of frost as her season of power wanes. The former Dark King Irial lies mortally wounded, and Niall is slipping closer to madness without his court's balance.

Melissa Marr's wide and varied cast of characters all return, to my delight, to own the stage for this final conflict. All their personalities, relationships, alliances, loves, powers, and loyalties are showcased to the fullest, making you realize how intricate everything and everyone that's been building up this entire series really is.

And yes, some would probably argue that the ending "wrapped up too neatly", but I felt this was thoroughly a case of the characters earning their happy endings. I was smiling ear-to-ear throughout the last few pages as the characters I'd grown to love and admire were rewarded for their struggles and heartache...and it was well-written and believable to boot. Great close to the series. ( )

my heart just wasn't into this book, I think things could've gone differently but as how they went I guess is acceptable for the end of the series. ( )