If you're into sexual scenes or descriptions of how hot men are, this book is for you. If you're not, steer clear of this one.

You can easily tell this was written by a woman, as she goes into detail about the bodies of men, especially Xaden Riorson's, and how Violet feels about this. Men are being objectified here, not women. While this is a breath of fresh air for once, I was not a fan of this. Yarros mentions how hot the men are plus Violet Sorrengail wanting to have sex with them or wanting them in general far more than it mentions the dragons and war college, which are supposed to be the focuses of the book.

This book was actually really fun at first, but as Violet began to crush on Xaden, it began to feel more like a cheesy enemies to lovers book. I was slowly turned off by the book once they started to develop a relationship when Xaden was supposed to be the antagonist in a way. Then, there was the sex scene. It felt awkward to read through! Not even thirty pages later, there's another sex scene. Between both scenes, Violet mentions sex so many times and Xaden does too. It got on my nerves, and I didn't feel like finishing the book, but I powered through. The final battle was short and anti-climactic, it felt rushed too. It was at the tail end of the book right after the second sex scene, you could tell Yarros probably realized, "Oh crap, the book is about to end and I forgot to include a real battle scene!"

Violet felt awkwardly cliche too. She was weak, and followed the lame "Not like other girls" trope as always. They barely go into why she was so weak and had silver hair because Yarros was too focused on talking about how sexy Xaden was.

Xaden felt like the cliche "bad boy" with his broody attitude and generic "sexy" body.

Liam Mairi, Rhiannon, Zidoc, and Sawyer were better characters. I think the story would've been greater if it focused on them instead of Violet and Xaden.

Not to mention the story had a plot twist ending with a cliffhanger. Immediately, I knew this story will become a "the enemies are actually the good guys, and the good guys are evil" trope.

The only redeeming qualities were two things; The war college's worldbuilding (one star) and the dragons (second star). Both were written well and I was invested in them.

Why are you looking here? You know what this book is. 

Really good. Fantastic world building and tense scenes that make you feel like you’re right in it. Really good cast of characters with a few that you’re not sure of and gives mystery throughout the book of “should I trust them?”. A tad bit predictable, but it didn’t make the parts where I said “I knew it!” any less exciting. 
Loved the Graphic Audio audiobook especially for the voices of the dragons!

I generally really liked this book. However, if I were to give it a critique, it would definitely be in the romance area. I found our two main characters to be a bit insufferable at times. Particularly in tense scenes, the way Violet would think about him just honestly pissed me off. Like get your mind out of the gutter for 10 seconds so you can save your friends and yourself please.

I said I wouldn’t read the second book if a specific character died, but luckily that character was not killed off… So I guess I’ll be reading the second book lol