This was my most happy surprise out of the readalong books! I went in having read multiple bad reviews and fully expecting to hate it and be bored by the cozy fantasy genre. Instead, this book gave me a delightful weekend of fluffy cozy reading while snuggled up on the couch with a million fairylights ✨ Kiela (the main character) basically has the same brain as me, with all the anxiety and overthinking and social awkwardness, so while I sometimes rolled my eyes at her while reading, I know that I would have had the same exact train of thoughts in her place 😂 The island gave off such an adorable and sweet found family vibe and it was just heartwarming to read. Especially after multiple heavier books these past weeks, this felt like a warm hug in book-form 🥰

Oh dear, unfortunately I am really disappointed by this book. I knew it would be disturbing and not what I normally read, but I had high hopes and thought it would be interesting. And yet the only reason I didn‘t DNF was because I wanted to get the readalong badge 🎃✨ I will say this, the premise sounds super interesting, especially with themes like government propaganda, we vs them thinking (and not even seeing the humans they eat as actual people), and horrifying parallels to the meat industry. And I guess it did give me some gruesome images, which is good because art is meant to disturb, so me disliking it doesn‘t even have to do with the content. Instead, the prose / writing style was just not my cup of tea at all. It is written in third person present tense, in a very blunt and dry way with the sentences sounding very chopped off. I suppose this was the author‘s intention, to show the emotional distance and how numb Marco is to all of that. And personally as a reader I did get numb to the horrifying descriptions pretty quickly as well, and I have to say I didn‘t find it as nightmare-inducing as I thought it would be. But this dry tone was so incredibly boring for me, and maybe this is due to the translation, but personally the tone bothered me so much that I could barely pay attention at all because my only though was how much I want this to finally be finished. But I am so, so happy for all of you who weren‘t bothered by this and enjoyed the book nonetheless!

Tower of Dawn was not my favorite book in the Throne of Glass series, but it had its beautiful moments and contains crucial plot points, so this is really not something you should skip! I had some initial trouble getting into the story, especially with Chaol not being a character I felt very close to. Moreover since this takes place in a new setting, there was quite a lot of worldbuilding, which felt a little bit odd for me in the middle of a series, so while I did appreciate getting to know this new setting of Antica, it took me longer than usual to really be hooked by the story. However, the more I learned about Chaol and his internal struggles and feelings, the more I could sympathize with him and now I like him a lot more than I did at the beginning of the book. I also loved reading about the healers and the Torre Cesme. And we got some sweet romance here as well. So all in all I still enjoyed this very much. Then again, I can very well imagine that my impatience while reading had a lot to do with the cliffhanger ending of EoS, and that if I had done a tandem read, I would maybe not have encountered this. I hope that during a reread (which will definitely happen at some point) I will be able to enjoy and appreciate this book even more.