How I Spoiler-Free Spoiled Clockwork Princess For Myself

So... this is a funny one. Also, I guess some of this could be considered spoilers for Clockwork Princess? Once I write the whole thing I'll give a spoiler-warning at the appropriate places, so so far, you can read freely.

So... I should stop starting paragraphs with So...

Anyway... Yeah that's not... yeah, no.

I'll just dive right in. Clockwork Princes came out in 2013. I was living in the US at the time, and I'd only heard of Cassandra Clare's books about once before. But all of my friends were really excited about this book, and I was flipping through it and I remember reading the first couple of chapters...

SPOILERS - SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH

...about Aloysius Starkweather's (fake) granddaughter and about Will and Jem meeting for the first time. And I remember thinking what terrible books my friends read, about terrifying men who came and put marks on a twelve year old girl who was screaming while the skin peeled back from her bones and her parents disconnected themselves from her grandfather, who seemed to care both too much and too little at the same time? But for some reason I was intrigued, and I flipped to the back and read the epilogue, about Tessa and Jem meeting when he's back in mortal form. And I remember feeling really sad even though I didn't know any of the characters, which should have been my first warning of how much these books were gonna make me cry in the future. And for some reason I got the feeling that someone - now I realize it was Will - had lost his memory, and both Tessa and Jem had loved him but Jem hadn't seen him for many years, and I think that WWII was mentioned, because Tessa and Jem didn't meet for a few years then, but thinking that they were talking about a fantasy war that happened only in the books... and here comes the funny part:

SPOILER FREE AGAIN

I didn't remember the name of the book. And one and a half years later, I read TID. I still didn't realize that it was that book until I actually started Clockwork Princess because I remembered reading the beginning, but I completely forgot what the end was (for those of you who skipped that last paragraph, I had read the end too and it almost made me cry without even knowing what had happened before) and when I reached it I was somehow surprised. So that's how I read some parts of CP before even hearing about the series, but somehow didn't give myself any spoilers. Also, suddenly realizing that it was that book my friends had been excited about (I said before that I realized what had happened while readin CP? Nope. My memory is that bad. I remember realizing it later now) made me realize how emotional the series was - without having read any of the other books, without even realizing what the epilogue was talking about, I was overwhelmed with emotions. Good job, Cassandra Clare. You still make me cry every single time I look at TID stuff on Tumblr. I hate you.

So that's it!

Actually that's not it. I had to look up what year it came out 'cause I'm an idiot *insert smiley grinning-with-teeth with its eyes closed being like 'that's who I am you can't hate me'* and I found this, which is no surprise, I often use the Wikia website for fandom stuff, but the first couple of paragraphs are really emotional and lovely and accurate and bring you back into the series so go read them: http://shadowhunters.wikia.com/wiki/Clockwork_Princess [SPOILERS]

~T.

(Does that stand for Tessa? Who knows? It definitely doesn't stand for Tal.)