I’m pretty sure anything written by Helen Sheuerer is basically a guaranteed 5 Stars at this point. I always get caught up and end up binging the book. This was of course the case for Iron & Embers. I had a special situation where I ended up with both the ebook and audiobook ARCs, so I was able to do a “tandem read” of sorts. It made this a really immersive read for me because I was able to get lost on Matt Haynes & Emilia Bauer’s narrations while also following along and annotating/highlighting. The audiobook was great! Matt & Emilia both did a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life, and I really like both of their voices. 
The story itself is amazing. I loved how Wren and Torj’s relationship deteriorated right away, and then redeveloped (slowly!) as the story progressed. They definitely had the enemies to lovers/love to hate you vibes in my opinion. This book actually reminds me a bit of A Court of Silver Flame, which was perfect for me since that’s my favorite ACOTAF book. I feel like Wren and Nesta have similarly magnificent character arcs and the same reluctance to accept their feelings for the MMF. I could write paragraphs about the similarities and why this is really a great thing in terms of character development, but suffice it to say I loved every page of this book…even when I wanted to shake Wren a bit. The ending absolutely killed me but also has me really excited for the next book!