In Victorian London, an orphan with a strange power is caught between two Shadowhunter best friends and a clockwork conspiracy.
- Score
- 80.1
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- third
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
If you liked this, read
What readers think
Readers consistently rank this above Clare's earlier Mortal Instruments series, praising the richly atmospheric Victorian London setting, the emotionally layered Will–Jem friendship, and Tessa as a more grounded and bookish heroine than Clary Fray. The slow-burn love triangle is widely considered one of YA fantasy's most agonising — in the best possible way — because both love interests are genuinely compelling and neither feels like a throwaway option. The most common criticism is that Will's early cruelty and deliberate rudeness can feel grating before his motivations are revealed, and that some readers find his resemblance to Jace Herondale too close for comfort. The pacing in the middle act is occasionally flagged as uneven, and the villains (particularly the Dark Sisters) are seen as underwritten relative to the protagonists. Goodreads places the book at approximately 4.30 stars across 880,000+ ratings — a clear fan favourite that holds up on rereads.
Read it if
- · Readers who want a slow-burn love triangle where both love interests are worth rooting for
- · Fans of historical fantasy with a lush, Gothic Victorian backdrop and literary references woven throughout
- · Anyone coming from The Mortal Instruments who wants deeper world-building and more emotionally complex characters
Skip it if
- · You find the 'rude bad boy with hidden depths' archetype exhausting — Will leans heavily into it for most of this book
- · You want explicit or steamy romance — this is firmly sweet/YA throughout
- · Clockwork automaton horror and scenes of characters cutting themselves for blood rituals are hard limits
If you liked this
- · For fans of Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments — same Shadowhunter world, stronger characters and setting
- · For fans of Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty — Victorian-era girls navigating secret supernatural societies
- · For fans of Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone — hidden world of warriors, slow-burn romance, identity mystery
- · For fans of Marie Rutkoski's The Winner's Curse — historical-adjacent fantasy, emotionally tense love story with high stakes
In this series
Part of The Infernal Devices — read in order:
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