If I may start off this review by saying, "Oh my god."
So, as none of you probably know, the Chosen One trilogy by Rainbow Rowell has been on my radar for about two years now. The books are long and thick but nonetheless I have read all of them now.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the series starts out with Simon Snow, a young magician whose father figure, known as "The Mage '' is training Simon, as he suspects Simon is the Chosen One. In the World of Mages, there is an Insidious Humdrum, a creature out and about creating dead spots for magic and spawning creatures to hunt down Simon and his disciples (well okay they were his friends but they all despised each other).
In the end, Simon goes on to kill off the Insidious Humdrum as well as The Mage, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Except Simon.
In the next book, "Wayward Son'' we see Simon as this sort of depressed lump on the couch. He's conquered his life's mission, now what? He also somehow feels that things are over for him and Baz, who's been with him since they were roommates as little kids (they got together in the end of the first book after hating each other for years, it's a long story).
This insufferable "are Simon and Baz actually gonna break up" trope went on for one and a half books. In this story Simon's best friend decides they're all going on vacation to America. They find a bunch of horrifyingly evil people and creatures there, save the day once again and head home.
Now we're at the last book.
This book...
Oh my god.
I bought this book five months ago, started reading it, and then promptly gave up. Four months later I decided to pick it back up again. I was about a quarter of the way through reading it when I left it off, and it took me about 3 weeks to finish it after that.
And I read very fast.
So, this time around, the book is very relationship based, which I appreciated after years of ‘will they, won't they’ tropes with the characters. In this story we finally see Simon and Baz in an actual adult relationship trying to figure everything out together, their maturity and character development is shown a lot in this book which made me really proud of how far they’ve come.
Simon has one last villain to face, after he decides to swear off magic forever. He’s pretty convinced that magic is simply not for him and he’d rather spend quiet nights in his apartment with his boyfriend than going out and looking for magical quests. But when a guy shows up and declares himself the next Chosen One, Simon and Baz are skeptical. And they’re trying their best to hunt down missing people, such as Baz’s stepmom, in the process. All while Penelope (Simon’s best friend) is hanging around with a cursed Normal (non magical person), and Agatha (Simon’s ex girlfriend) is somehow bonding with a lesbian veteranarian and trying to save the magical goats of Watford (the magical school they all attended).
Make sense?
Okay I know that was a lot but the story was incredibly well written, the final character development got me in all kinds of feels, I have a few complaints about the ending, I wish we would’ve gotten to see more of our main characters in the future, but otherwise I really enjoyed the pain this book caused me :)