REVIEW: 🐉 A Light in the Flame 🐺

I loved this book. The plot is summed up below in a snapshot.

Rating: ✨10/5✨

Spice: 🌶️🥵🔥

Plot: ✅🤐😱

Romance: ✅🥺♥️

Angst: ✅🤭🤤

‼️SPOILERS FOR ALITF and ACOTAR‼️

Mental health: Sera is one of the best characters I’ve ever read. I don’t like comparing authors, but I feel like SJM and JLA cover trauma and mental health well. With Feyre, we see how she comes out from under the mountain a shell of herself and how Rhys helps her find herself again.

A Light in the Flame discusses two very important topics: trauma/mental health and negative relationships with parents.

Let’s tackle Sera’s anxiety. In a lot of books, anxiety is alluded to and usually, the character has some epiphany then it’s never mentioned again. In ALITF, it runs throughout the whole book. Sera works on coping mechanisms and talks to people who don’t shame her or call her weak. My favorite part of this is JLA calls it anxiety. Not a pit in her stomach or pressure on her chest. Sera and others say, “you have anxiety, “ which doesn’t make you any less strong or badass. It’s something that authors gloss over.

The second topic is how Sera isn’t close to her mother. I personally have a strained relationship with my mom and characters rarely have a bad mom who didn’t act like a mother. Most of the time in books, the mother has done actively evil things, is dead, or the daughter and mom are super close. In this case, Sera says she doesn’t want to have real contact with her mom. It’s validating.

I love this series so much. I love Nyktos and Sera and how they accept each other and grow together. I love how the plot was not one-dimensional and has several layers. I’m sure that Nyktos can love and is in love with Sera. JLA specifically mentions he senses Sera’s love and JLA makes every scene and sentence count.