Stacia in Progress

"I knew you thought there to be some corruptive force about you that would break me. I meant to show you that I would not break, that love was not so fragile."Sometimes a soul-mate is not a lover, but instead a friend who is closer than a brother.4.5 stars. This is truly one of the most beautiful love stories I have ever witnessed. Throw out all of your negative thoughts about love triangles because THIS story is not about two men fighting over one woman. It is about three people loving each other equally with no one person in the center. Friendship is just as important as passion. The bonds of brotherhood hold just as much weight as the importance of desire. Selfishness holds no gain. Sacrifice holds no reward. For when one is hurting, everyone is hurting. THAT is the beauty of this love story.I didn't think I was going to cry like that, but it happened. I am on the side of the fans who were happy with the epilogue. The way everything came full circle was perfect. It drove the point home of how everybody and everything in this story (and in a sense the greater world of shadowhunters) was intertwined.We knew that there would be some joy and some heartache because there was no way to end this story perfectly. As readers, we were given enough joy to balance the heartache. The author chose an ending which worked on so many levels without feeling like a copout. A friend of mine made a great point about why this trilogy ending was still not the easiest solution. A copout would have been to find a way to make one of the guys immortal so Tess would not have to ever be alone. There is nothing more that I want to say. Even though I appreciate both the Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series, I feel like there's a certain magic with ID which comes from the historic London setting. I will truly miss these characters, even though I know we'll see at least a couple of them again in future MI (and possibly Dark Artifices) books.