Everyone’s most anticipated book of the year comes out in less than two weeks, Sarah J.Maas’ s third Crescent City installment (and let’s be honest, ACOTAR crossover), House of Flame and Shadow. To get into the spirit, I’ve decided to rank my preference of both series. Let’s be honest, any Sarah J.Maas book gets an automatic 5/5 stars from me, so this is just a light-hearted look at these books. 

I am not someone who has done annotated rereads of Crescent City and ACOTAR or has made deep-dive predictions before I read into House of Flame and Shadow and before writing this post. I have considered rereading House of Sky & Breath before reading House of Flame and Shadow, but even two years out, I still feel like I have a decent memory of what happened in book #2 (and let’s be honest, I’ll probably read or watch a recap or two because I just realized it came out TWO years ago, not one). I am so happy for Sarah J.Maas and readers that her books have become SO extremely widespread.

 If you’ve been here a while, you probably know that I’ve been reading Sarah J.Maas since 2015, when I was reading Throne of Glass and the first ACOTAR book in my high school library(!!!). I’ve been to a few of her signings, including one at a Costco (which is so crazy to think of now that SJM used to be able to have calm signings there) and more popular ones at Book Con (which is still a major RIP because I loved the Book Expo and Book Con weekend, but I honestly can’t imagine how that event would be now with how the book influencer community has grown in the past two years alone, not to mention the readership of authors like SJM). That all being said, I’m just here to enjoy all of SJM’s books…probably avoid bookstagram for the next week few weeks to avoid spoilers since my copy that I preordered in August is scheduled to come the week after release – sigh that while I love that everyone is reading SJM, I’m disappointed about how hard it is now to get copies of her books on release day, let alone exclusive editions – I think I walked into Barnes and Noble on release day and always got copies of her books until Kingdom of Ash (and even then a pre-order got screwed up, so I had to end up buying the last exclusive in person). Anyone, time for the books! 

My Rankings (in order from “Least Favorite” to FAVORITE):