MFB: City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments # 5)

“Kill me, little sister. Kill me and you kill Jace, too.”  

     It's finally happened! City of Lost Soulshas officially become my favorite book inThe Mortal Instruments. This was, without doubt, the best book in my experience with this series. I feel relieved that I can finally write a review about a book of this series where I have mostly positive thoughts to write. 

Here is the official description of the book:

"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."

However, I want to start with what I didn't like about this book. At the top of my list stands Jocelyn, obviously. I hated her in the previous book and I hated her in this book. Also, I couldn't bring myself to care about the characters of Maia and Jordan in this book either, and I was very frustrated with their points of view because I just didn't care much about their stories and I felt like they didn't play such a very important role in the story. The same goes for Jocelyn and Luke. Maybe I'm not being reasonable, but the truth is that I couldn't bring myself to care much about any characters apart from the five main ones. The only exception is, without doubt, Magnus.

When I first started reading these books, I thought for sure that my favorite couple will be Jace and Clary, but after reading five books I realized that their romance was just awful. We never got to see an actual good romance between the two of them. They were either fighting, upset with each other, or in love but not talking to each other. In this book, we got way more of them but, unfortunately, it wasn't real. Jace was under Sebastian's possession for the majority of this book so I can't help but think that their moments weren't real.

But, as I said, this was definitely my favorite book in the series. I liked the fact that there was a lot of action in this book and it kept me hooked for most of the time. The whole Jace-Clary-Sebastian story was really good and it kept me reading page after page. I actually really liked Sebastian in this book. Call me crazy, but I did. For most of it, anyway. I liked his interaction with Clary, which almost felt genuine at the time, but I think we all knew it was just pretend. Towards the ending of the book, Sebastian showed his true colors and it was nothing short of shocking when he tried to abuse Clary. However, I did like his character a lot in this book which is a shame, because just like Jace, it wasn't his real self. 

It's funny that the only book of this series where I liked Jace and Clary was the one book were Jace wasn't being himself and Clary was pretending to be okay with it. It seemed to me that, under Sebastian's influence, Jace stopped being his whiny, sometimes stupid, self and he simply acted like he was in love with Clary. But, since it was all fake, I knew that in the end it had to be redeemed somehow. And now we get to my favorite part of the book. I was extremely thrilled (and this might sound crazy) that, in the end, Clary used Glorious on Jace instead of Sebastian to separate the two of them. I just loved it! It made everything way more dramatic and it definitely had a bigger impact on me.

The little cliffhanger ending kept me my interested piqued and, after finally reading a good book in this series, it left me very excited to read the final installment in The Mortal Instruments. However, I must say that while I did give this book 5 stars, I didn't exactly love it. I certainly didn't like it as much as I liked other books I rated 5 stars. Instead, I gave it 5 stars because I thought it was the best book in the series and because reading it was my most pleasant experience with this series.