Dear Leigh Bardugo,

To be honest, all I want to do is collapse on the floor with exhaustion. Because I stayed up all night reading Ruin and Rising, because my emotions are tired of being taken control of, because my heart is so bruised and battered right now IT NEEDS TO REST. Your writing, your plots: good grief your plots. They are so intricate and complex and clever and stunning and when will you stop being so incredibly cruel? At some points in the book, YOU KNOW WHEN, YOU WROTE THEM, I literally had to just sit there and just, just. I don't know. At one point I dived face first into my duvet and had a mini-hyperventilation session. That happened a lot. In all seriousness though, I think my heart nearly fell out of my chest, I mean, it's majorly bruised and patched up and bruised over the patches. So –

You managed to make me laugh, cry, hyperventilate, cry some more, smile, laugh, crumple into a ball (rather like the tissue I had clutched in my fist) and feel so many things I was constantly in a whirlwind of emotions that all crashed into me at once like a tidal wave and I couldn't breathe and I was drowning and then suddenly my head was above the water and I could breathe again but barely just and after that I don't really know what happened but I'm here now and I survived. Barely. But I did.

The way your characters came to life, completely, utterly; they were there, they were, I was them. Baghra, Sturmhound (of course), Mishi, they were my favourites. And then – Mal. I don't even want to talk about Mal for fear of spoiling something, everything – because it was everything. Alina, Genya, David, Tolya and Tamar, even Zoya: all I wanted to do was delve into the book and help them and save them and I couldn't but I carried on reading even though I wanted to stop and absorb everything more slowly and oh. The ending. That plot twist. I literally cannot even.

So there you have it.

I hope you're happy that my life was both crushed and built at the same time in the course of reading your book. You should be, because Ruin and Rising is my favourite series ending of all time alongside Dreams of Gods and Monsters.

*Crawls to hug book and stare at the ceiling*

The Reader That Nearly Overdosed on Feels