What We Know About ACOTAR 6, the Next Sarah J. Maas Book

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May 5 is the tenth anniversary of Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series. While ACOTAR readers should be in a celebratory mood, instead they’ve taken on the desperate tone of a fandom that was promised Reputation (Taylor’s Version) and got only an overflowing basket of “Easter eggs.” Tune your social-media algorithm to BookTok or Bookstagram and you’ll find thousands of posts predicting the ACOTAR 6 release date, speculating on whom the next book is about, and complaining about something called A Court of Shaded Truths (which is totally fake).

The frenzy is understandable. It’s been more than four years since the release of the last ACOTAR book, A Court of Silver Flames, and during that time the series has exploded in popularity. Fans are hungry for any tidbits of information about the next book, and online creators are happy to speculate. After all, you can only make so many videos about what to read after you’ve finished the 16-book “Maasverse” and about which character should be played by Henry Cavill (correct answer: All of them, including Feyre).

Thankfully, it’s pretty clear that SJM is not going to pull a George R.R. Martin. It’s been 14 months since she released her last chunky fantasy book, not 14 years. And there’s no risk of showrunners getting ahead of Maas and giving the series an unsatisfying ending since the ACOTAR Hulu show is no longer in development.

Here, a guide — which is spoiler free except for one clearly noted section — to all the latest news and updates on the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book.

How do we know Sarah J. Maas is writing ACOTAR 6?

She publicly teased the book three times in the past two years and mentioned that she has been working on it as far back as 2023.

Maas’s last major interview was in January 2024, when she appeared on the Today show to promote the third book in her Crescent City series. She told NBC’s Jenna Bush Hager that she plans “years down the line,” so she knows the “next four books that I want to write.” When Hager asked which series she’s focusing on next, she confirmed that a new ACOTAR book is in the works.

“So that’s going to be the next Court of Thorns and Roses book,” Maas said. “I’m very, very excited about that one.”

On April 3, 2024, Maas shared a post on Instagram that made it pretty clear she’s heading back to Prythian:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sarah J. Maas (@sarahjmaas)

And Maas promised she’d have a book-six update “soon” in a December 2024 TikTok about Spotify releasing new versions of the audiobooks.

“I’m not gonna tell you guys anything” about the sixth book, Maas said. “No surprise, it’s going to be a long book. It’s too early for me to tell you who it will be about and what’s going to happen, but I hope to have more details for you soon.”

@spotify

ACOTAR fans, author of the year Sarah J. Maas spills the tea. #SpotifyWrapped #booktok #acotar #sarahjmaas

♬ original sound – Spotify

So will we get ACOTAR 6 news on May 5?

Maybe? That would certainly be a better way to mark the tenth anniversary than reissuing the first five books with underwhelming all-black covers that may or may not be designed to lure male readers. But there haven’t been any specific hints about a May 5 book announcement.

Has SJM’s publisher revealed the ACOTAR 6 release date?

No. Bloomsbury Publishing hasn’t said anything about forthcoming Maas releases in more than two years. In March 2023, the publisher announced that House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City 3) would come out the following January and revealed Maas is contracted for six more books after that:

Bloomsbury has also announced the signing of a further four book deal with Maas, in addition to the three books currently under contract, cementing the long-term strategy to grow her brand around the world.

The second a Bloomsbury executive says anything about ACOTAR 6, we’ll know. We’re at the point where a significant chunk of the fandom got hyped for a Bloomsbury corporate meeting on March 20, 2025 (which, as it turned out, was about boring corporate stuff), and TikTokers are trying to predict her book-release timeline through 2034:

@rhiannonlucys

The internet really said fake news 😂 there isn’t an announcement coming today. #sarahjmaas #acotar #booktok #romantasy #bookish #booklover #booknews #bookannouncement #booktoker #tbr

♬ original sound – Rhi ✨ | BookTok 📚

So is ACOTAR 6 delayed?

Not really, but if you look back at SJM’s path from self-publishing her first book online to becoming the best-selling author of 2024, it’s easy to see why her fans are getting impatient.

Maas is a prolific writer. Her first book, Throne of Glass, came out in 2012, and she released at least one book in that series every year until the final installment came out in 2018. Meanwhile, she published A Court of Thorns and Roses in 2015; new ACOTAR books came out in 2016, 2017, and 2018. So during that period, Maas was usually releasing two books a year.

Then her pace slowed down considerably. Maas became a mother in 2018 and had a second child in 2022. Her books also got a lot longer (i.e., 800-plus pages) and increasingly interconnected. These are her past four releases:

• House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City 1) — March 3, 2020
• A Court of Silver Flames (ACOTAR 5) — February 16, 2021
• House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City 2) — February 15, 2022
• House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City 3) — January 30, 2024

ACOTAR is Maas’s most popular series, and for the past five years she has mainly been focused on Crescent City. The gap between Silver Flames and ACOTAR 6 is already the longest stretch there has ever been between subsequent installments in one of her series.

Plus, obviously, the world changed a lot during those years. While BookTok’s role in Maas’s success is often overstated (her books regularly appeared on best-seller lists well before TikTok existed), it is true that droves of Maas fans first heard about her via the app. And BookTok is a double-edged sword. The same community of online readers that supercharged SJM’s rise is now clamoring for fresh ACOTAR content (despite getting some crossover action in later Crescent City books). After the Today show tease, some fans speculated that book six would come out in late 2024 or early 2025. When that didn’t pan out, it created the perception that the next installment is delayed, though Maas was vague about her timeline.

Has SJM explained why the next book is taking so long?

Yes. Maas told Today that she’ll be publishing at a slower pace going forward because she’s now balancing her career with raising her two young children.

“Before I had kids, I was writing two books a year, but I also had no social life,” she said. “Like, I was basically Gollum in my little writing cave, just writing all day. But now I get to see the sunlight thanks to my children needing to, like, go out to school. So the writing pace has slowed down a little bit — you know, a book a year, a book every year and a half. It’s a tough thing, to have a job and to need to show up and focus on that job, but then to also be able to focus on your children.”

Um, isn’t the next book actually ACOTAR 5?

Some people argue that the fourth ACOTAR book, A Court of Frost and Starlight, should be counted as book 3.5 since it’s only a novella. But this is like the romantasy version of pointing out that the year 2000 technically wasn’t the start of a new millennium. Most people refer to the next book as ACOTAR 6, though it will be only the fifth full-length novel in the series.

What is the title of ACOTAR 6?

We have no idea, and it probably isn’t worth speculating about, as many SJM titles are only tangentially related to the book’s content. Are mist and fury really essential to the plot of ACOTAR 2? According to legend (i.e., a Maas newsletter that’s no longer online), she considered several other options and just liked the word fury.

What is ACOTAR 6 about? (No spoilers.)

Probably Elain. The first three books are from Feyre’s point of view, the novella is multi-POV, and the last book focuses on Nesta, the eldest Archeron sister. Maas has said for years that each sister would get her own book at some point, and she has set up a lot of Elain plotlines, from her unresolved romantic situation, to her abilities, to questions about where she really belongs. While promoting Silver Flames in 2021, Maas said she “thought it was pretty obvious” whom the next book is about. Elain is the obvious answer.

What is ACOTAR 6 About? (With spoilers.)

FINAL SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU HAVEN’T READ ALL OF ACOTAR AND CRESCENT CITY, SKIP TO THE NEXT QUESTION.

Though Silver Flames, and particularly the Azriel bonus chapter, hinted at an Elain-Azriel-Lucien love triangle, who knows? The Maasverse keeps expanding, and SJM has been known to make delightfully wacky decisions. (Did anyone think the penultimate Throne of Glass book would focus on Chaol? How many fantasy series include a holiday special?)

Here’s just a sampling of the more unconventional ACOTAR 6 plot theories floating around the internet:

• The next book focuses on Azriel. Yes, it seems “pretty obvious” that he’d be the male lead in an Elain book, as they have a budding romance and Silver Flames alternated between Nesta and Cassian POVs. But some have posited that the book is mainly about Azriel, not Elain, with more on his relationship with Gwyn or some other love interest.

• The Crescent City crossover continues, and the Bryceriel community is vindicated.

• More Mor content. We learn the full story on what happened between Morrigan and Eris, discover who or what was watching her in the woods, and find out what the heck it means to have the “power of truth.”

• A Court of Even More Silver Flames. Why should only Feyre get a trilogy and half a novella? Book six could be Nesta’s ACOMAF, culminating in a huge exposition dump in which Cassian explains why he didn’t actually eat that stale biscuit.

• Tamlin redemption arc! We find out the “Beauty and the Beast” retelling from ACOTAR 1 has barely begun. Somehow Elain winds up as High Lady of the Spring Court. The book ends with the entire fandom feeling bad for nicknaming him Tampon.

Will there be a seventh ACOTAR book?

Almost certainly. While SJM hasn’t said how many books she has planned for the ACOTAR series in total, she alluded to a seventh installment in her Today interview.

“I know much more about what’s happening in this [sixth ACOTAR book],” she said. “And then the next book in that series, I have the ideas and general, vague thoughts. But the nitty-gritty of writing and the emotional journeys with the characters — I usually love to go on those journeys with them.”

What other books is Sarah J. Maas working on?

Maas told Today that there will be a fourth Crescent City book, though “you will have to wait a bit.” She also teased another mysterious upcoming book.

“There’s one book that I’m going to be writing after this next ACOTAR book that I’m very excited about. I’m not going to say what world it’s in. I’m not going to say anything,” she said. “But it’s a story that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for a long time … I think it’s going to be a very emotional book for me to write, just in terms of the world I’ll be writing and the characters that might pop up.”

@todayshow

#SarahJMaas reveals that she already knows what stories she wants towrite next! Head to the link in our bio to read the full digital interview with Sarah or find it on today.com. #TODAYShow #ACOTAR #ThroneOfGlass #CrescentCity #BookTok

♬ Lo-fi hip hop – NAO-K

It definitely sounds as though she’s talking about another Throne of Glass book. Several years ago, she quipped that her first series “is technically ended — but is it?” She could also be hinting at the Twilight of the Gods series, which fans are convinced she’s writing based on a now-deleted Pinterest board. With SJM, you just never know. As she explained back in 2017, sometimes she secretly writes fan fiction of her own work, gets drunk and reveals this to her editor, and suddenly lots of ladies have Nesta tattoos.