I don’t know why I even bothered.

Blurb

What price is too high to pay, even for love? Plunge into fifth instalment the internationally bestselling Mortal Instruments series and “prepare to be hooked” (Entertainment Weekly).

The New York Times bestselling Mortal Instruments continues—and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon.

What price is too high to pay, even for love? When Jace and Clary meet again, Clary is horrified to discover that the demon Lilith’s magic has bound her beloved Jace together with her evil brother Sebastian, and that Jace has become a servant of evil. The Clave is out to destroy Sebastian, but there is no way to harm one boy without destroying the other. As Alec, Magnus, Simon, and Isabelle wheedle and bargain with Seelies, demons, and the merciless Iron Sisters to try to save Jace, Clary plays a dangerous game of her own. The price of losing is not just her own life, but Jace’s soul. She’s willing to do anything for Jace, but can she still trust him? Or is he truly lost?

Love. Blood. Betrayal. Revenge. Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series.

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This book picks off from the 4th in the series with little to no recap and just plunges into the action with no warning. Slow moving and very verbose, with a lot of dialogue and never-ending dialogue with no point, it feels like a badly written piece of prose done for the sake of it. Focus moves between Simon who is trying to get his mom to love him, Jace is still sexy, but it’s not him, it’s him.

So this whole real Jace/evil Jace concept was confusing the hell out of me. The evil Jace wasn’t even evil. In fact, I thought the evil Jace was the real one. Because he was a piece of shit. He would make those incredibly Jace-like haughty remarks about how perfect and desirable he was. Jace would not survive in the real world with that arrogant attitude, which is why he’s fictional. Thank God. Anyway, I don’t get it. 

There are pages of them talking about how they would do anything for each other. How they love each other. Pages of their cringey romance.

By the way, I wasn’t kidding when I said they wanted to cut each other open with their bare hands. Don’t believe me?

He kissed her harder and she clutched his shoulders as he sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and bit down on it, sending a shock of pleasure mixed with pain through her body. She squirmed to get closer to him and felt his breath quicken; she could taste blood in her mouth, salt and hot. It was as if they wanted to cut each other apart, she thought, to climb inside each other and breathe each other’s breath and share each other’s heartbeats, even if it killed them both. There was blood under her nails where she had clawed his back.

And this one time when they were finally about to have sex, but they didn’t because they needed to whine and moan more:

I’m jealous.
Of who?
Myself. I hate the thought of him being with you. The other me. The one Sebastian controls.

And Sebastian who is just a thirst trap for emo girls.

“I need Jace,” said Sebastian. “But in his heart, he’s not like me. But you are.”

Urgh. DNF, straight to the charity bin with this one.