this was my corona guilty read because I literally couldn't focus on anything else and I love the dramatics of shadowhunter families. but. BUT. even though i did enjoy reading the book because I care about shadowhunters drama there were three things that brought down the narrative so much that they warrant a three star rating. 1) Matthew. I adore Matthew, I still do and I was scared for him the entire book because of the theories that he might get stripped of his runes etc etc. but there's just no real resolution to his arc? like from way back when we had Jem's stories and learned about the poison and Charlotte losing her baby there was this built-up to how it changed Matthew fundamentally, and then the conversation between him and his parents is just... mentioned in a flashback? I guess his confession to James was supposed to be more meaningful but considering that everything Matthew did, his alcoholism, his recklessness, his distancing, was connected to this one event in his life, this flashback conversation really felt like a very weak resolution. he deserved a proper conversation of how he was affected by it and also how it affected his relationship with his friends and family. 2) Christopher. I don't actually mind that Christopher died, it hurt of course but the way it was handled just didn't work for me. we never saw his parent's reaction to their son's death which made me a bit angry because it's Cecily and Gabriel and we've learned to care about them too. she's Will's sister! she deserves to grieve for her son! I did love however how Anna's grief was portrayed but his friends forgot him way too quickly and his death just felt rushed. him dying deserves to have at least as much of an impact as with the Blackthorn family in TDA. 3) the recycled tropes. I also usually don't mind overused tropes, they are tropes for a reason but this just really felt a bit like a rehash of TMI and TID. the way how the love triangle was handled (Matthew/Cordelia/James vs. Jem/Tessa/Will), how both Herondales got possessed/were spiritually bonded to a demonic entity (Jace/Sebastian vs. James/Belial), how both got stabbed to sever this connection and then healed by something otherworldly so that they could survive. also like, their trip to edom etc. of course they weren't completely the same things but they felt so similar that I was a bit. eh. even with this criticism I have to say I still enjoyed reading it, mostly because it's a shadowhunters book and I know what to expect of those. Alistair and Thomas were a nice touch and I liked their banter and eventual relationship a lot and Anna and Ari's relationship was also pretty sweet. I wish the book had focused a bit more on Lucie and Jesse's relationship but oh well, you can't have everything with so many characters involved. all in all I think it was still a satisfying conclusion for TLH and I have grown to love the characters a lot and am a bit sad to say goodbye to them. I can only hope that TWP will not just pick up with the TDA crew but will at least mention the TLH characters as well.

as much as I enjoy drama… after the fifth time James failed to communicate with Cordelia or with Matthew or Cordelia with Matthew or with Lucie or Matthew with Thomas- you get it.. My favourite chapters were the ones were neither James nor Matthew or Cordelia interacted. Still all the love for Anna and Ari and Christopher. Spoiler: If there had only been 10% less drama Christopher’s death would have gotten the grief it deserved.

I really enjoyed the conclusion to this series. Sadly the first half of the book was a bit tough, it dragged along with a lot of unnesessary love triangle and miscommunication (because lets be honest, we all new how it was going to end). In the second half the story picked up pace significantly and I couldn't put the book aside anymore.

I really like the first two books, but the third book was a bit underwhelming. It was way too long and it had this weird love triangle (I hate the love triangles trope) for most of the time. I was really shocked at which character got killed off (I still miss you). To be honest, I didn’t care much for the relationship between Cordelia and James in this book, the tension was already gone. The best relationships were between Thomas/Alastair & Lucie/Jesse (<3). Grace deserved better, she got an redemption arc and I’m so glad about it. The last third of the book was, okay I guess? The fight in the end was too short for me, in TDA it was waaaaay better. The beginning and most of the book felt too long and the ending was way too fast paced. I had the feeling, Cassie was in a rush to finish the book and you can feel it while you’re reading it. TLH trilogy will be close to my heart (I love historical fantasy and even better with shadowhunters) and I as I said the first two books were great! I will read the new books from this universe in the future, for sure. I will give this 4 stars, I’m a little disappointed, but it’s okay I guess to finish something and not put your whole heart to it over whatever

Ok listen, I had some issues (like a lot) but over all I really enjoyed the read. There were a lot of things I did not see coming and that I thought were amazing. I don't agree with every narrative choice and development made in this book but I don't have to so that's ok. In the end it comes down to whether I enjoyed it or not and to that I can say it simply was a good read. I laughed, I cried, I swore, I squealed. It's not going to be my favorite book of the Shadowhunter Universe but also not my least favorite. It's solid. Let's just put expectations and theories we all had before it came out aside. I think we had way too much time to overthink and -analize CoT before the release and I also think a lot of us would've liked it better if we hadn't turned around every single line of the previous books for clues. For now, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and hope some of the plot holes and issues I had with Chain of Thorns will be solved in the short story collection. Cheers.

50% Love Triangle/ 50% messy saving the world (or just London, for what we know) and Matthew from his drinking problem. Boy, I was so excited for this book, let me tell you. I've put aside a brilliant book, to jump right in, when this came out. And now I'm mad. It's not bad bad, but seemed like a copy and paste of her other Shadowhunter Novels at times (like, why the forced Love Triangle again???). Matthew deserved better, his drinking problem was solved solid I think, but everything else was just solved a little easy. She could've made him a Silent Brother and the repetition would've been complete lol. Christophers death was unnecessary. It felt like she killed him off because she needed to kill someone and just threw the dices to decide. It wasn't well written, it was lazy and not really smart. I normally cry my eyes out with her death scenes, this just made me angry. I loved Christopher and his relationship with Grace. His death didn't contribute any dramatics to the story and didn't bring the plot forward and it was brushed over so fast. She wrote half the book in detail about the damn love triangle, but Christophers death wasn't worth much thought I guess. As for the rest... yeah they won, happy clappy ending, what a surprise. Her explanation for the incorrect family tree is laughable, she really couldn't have thought about a more clever solution? And where do we get the correct one now? Also: what happens to Bridget? Do we get to know that? I loved Alastair and Thomas, let them live in peace please. Also Ari and Anna- chefs kiss. Perfect, would love to see more of them. Lucie and Jesse have my heart. They deserved more attention. But she wrote their relationship really well. Grace is not the bitch we thought her to be, but deeply indoctrinated with her mothers crazy views on the world which she still can escape and be a helpful source in defeating Belial. Give that girl a rest. Cordelia and James are awesome together, she still can write great couples with good chemistry. So, yeah... I still enjoyed a great deal of this book, it's a solid story, but being used to her usual greatness, this book left me a little disappointed and sad. I would love to read her original ending, that was supposed a lot more tragic, but maybe that would've been it. Still I can appreciate her writing something as fluffy as this for her fans during covid, for them to have some light during a difficult time. I'm still excited for her future books though.

Ich liebe, liebe, liebe alles an dieser Reihe: Den wunderbaren Schreibstil von Cassandra Clare, der die Geschichte in meinem Kopf zum Leben erweckt. Die zauberhaften Charaktere, die von Seite zu Seite mehr zu Familie werden. Ihren Mut, ihre Liebe, ihr Vertrauen zueinander. Das Setting in der schönsten Stadt der Welt. Die Spannung. Die Hingabe. Die großen Emotionen, die so so tief unter die Haut gehen. Das Ich-möchte-nicht-dass-es-jemals-endet-Gefühl.

I was so exited to read the finale of the trilogy. It was a good book, made me feel all the things, but it wasn’t the best finale I have ever read. Usually I get the feeling of Cassandra writing better and better books. So I expected this book to be an epic finale. For some reason, it wasn’t. I thought that the ending was very predictable and that early on. The battles were there, but not as grand and they didn’t feel as desperate and urgent as others have in the past. Something that happened in the book, that should have made a huge impact on the reader, kinda fell flat to me, even tho I was really sad it happened, I almost forgot it did, until it was mentioned again. Still, I had fun reading this and can’t wait to see/read more of this world.

I wanted to like this book - wanted to love it. Was it because I had too high expectations? Yes, maybe that's exactly what it was. There has rarely been a book from the Shadowhunter universe that I haven't really warmed up to, but this one is probably number one. The books about Will/Tessa/Jem and James/Cordelia + all the others have never been my favourites, but have always captured me. With Chain of Thorns, however, the momentum just didn't fly. Maybe it was the writing style in a lot of places? I had the feeling that a proofreader could have looked over it again, because there were so many repeated words in a short space of time that I didn't enjoy reading it. But I liked the many POV changes and that it wasn't just about James/Cordelia. But I also have to say that TLH and TID were too similar in many aspects. (Especially the thing with James/Cordelia/Matthew felt like Will/Tessa/Jem for a while and also the thing that it was questionable whether Matthew would survive the whole thing (because of his addiction). I thought it was good that the topic of addiction was dealt with, but I would have liked a different character. What bothered me the most was the fact that ALL the characters were not able to communicate properly with each other. (About feelings / fears and so on) I would have liked to throw the book in the corner a few times; it is also a character trait that runs through all Shadowhunter books. Normally I like the arguments within the Clave, but slowly the eternal problem of the Inquisitor and so on got on my nerves. It feels like too easy a scapegoat to look for there. (Of course, it's always like that in real life, too, but I don't know if it has to be like that in a novel series, too, that a lot of things just keep repeating themselves). I also hope that Cordelia and Lucy's relationship has really stabilised after their Parabatai ceremony, because what happened between them was absolute kindergarten for me and I was really annoyed by Lucy at the end and didn't want to read anything more about her ... Christopher dying was the worst thing for me ... I love Thomas and Alastair and Alastair's development in general. I really enjoyed reading about them and I never thought that Grace would become one of my favourites. I would have really liked to see a future for Grace and Christopher ...