this was such a poor follow up to fourth wing. while i had plenty of issues with fourth wing, it was at least a fun read and i loved the setting. this book was so dragged out and boring i wanted to pull my hair out.

xaden and violet were both so immature. they should have been a slow burn across multiple books because at least that would have made it slightly more interesting. the whole back and forth between them of not trusting each other but still loving each other and not being able to communicate got old really quickly. i don't know how the relationship will be dragged out for 5 books, and i honestly don't care to learn.

there were way too many side characters and none of them were properly fleshed out. i could not tell you a single difference between ridoc and sawyer, other than the fact that sawyer was the one who had to repeat the year. they genuinely had no personalities and it was so hard to keep up with all the random characters.

the pacing was so slow and needed major editing (convinced this book did not have an editor). it felt like a bunch of random scenes just strung together. the first half of the book was literally just xaden and violet flying to each other every week where they would have the same fight over and over again. and then the second half finally started to have a semblance of a plot, but it still suffered from scenes that were so meaningless. and then the ending went by way too quickly and skipped over so many important details, which i'm assuming is to generate more questions for the reader so they pick up the next book.

it was definitely easy to read this, but i was so frustrated and based on how long this was, i feel like i could have spent my time reading a better quality book.

i wanted this book to never end. this was such an emotional rollercoaster and i can't believe i fell in love with a group of the most emotionally messed up people i've ever read about. more than half of the things did not make sense plot wise, but i grew to love the characters so much and the found family was perfect in every way.