Any Way The Wind Blows - Rainbow Rowell

⭐ 10.0/10

(Originally written by Rebecca)

This is the third and final installment of the Simon Snow books, which began with Carry On, one of my favourite books ever. I absolutely LOVED it (which is obvious because I spent 12 straight hours reading it and finished at 3am). The second book began to explore the aftermath of being a Chosen One and navigating the trauma and complicated emotions of having been used by adults to save the world, but this one did the exact same thing, only better and with a much more satisfying resolution. The second book honestly felt kind of extraneous, with the plot of it not really factoring into this one at all (besides some of the characters introduced) and not adding to the character arcs all that much. I kept expecting it to come full circle, but it never really did haha.

Regardless, I loved the way this book tackled relationships in the midst of attempting to heal from trauma, and also the way people with power (in this case, a lot of magic) will inherently not understand the lives of people who don't have it. And also some really great Chosen One discourse, which I always love as a rule. I love Rainbow Rowell's writing style, and despite some of the heavy themes, I was also constantly laughing out loud. Some of the sideplots were a bit pointless in the big picture, but I loved every character and never didn't want to read about them. This was such a satisfying conclusion to Simon Snow's story; I love for all my loose ends to be tied up, and for the most part, they were, with enough closure and hopefulness to leave me feeling good about things. I just love Simon and Baz so much :')