I don’t have any personal empathy for Taryn, but it is weird to me that most readers can’t manage to see things from both sisters’ perspectives. Maybe that just speaks to how well the author writes from Jude’s rather than Taryn’s. I don’t think it’s fair to say she loves Jude less than Jude loves her; they both keep secrets from each other and their trauma has broken down their relationship. In fact, I think their illusion of deep trust in each other is more a factor of them as unreliable narrators than anything actually reflected by their relationship.

Jude is objectively a selfish person, and vicious, and arrogant, and risk-taking. Just like Taryn. There’s plenty of YA romantasy where we adore the main character for taking risks with a “bad magical boy” like Taryn did.

I guess what I’m trying to say is - why do we justify Jude’s violent anti-social betrayals of people? Because they ended up in a “happier” ever after? But what if Taryn’s choices and risks actually ended up being the plot-twisty “fix” of the story? At plenty of points in the story, it could have gone either way.

I guess it’s just weird to find myself enjoying the stories of YA political fantasies/romantasies but how weirdly moralistic those reading communities get in giving the FMC grace for every morally gray decision she makes, but absolutely none of the same for any other character, male or female.

This whole thing is an apology, not an excuse. Jude’s always complaining about how nobody understands how hard she has it being mortal in faerie. Well, Taryn does, and she made different choices in order to survive. Is that really so unfathomable?