Daughter of Smoke and Bone Review

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor

Release Date: September 27, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Genre: YA Fantasy

Rating: ★★★★

Links: Amazon / B&N

Summary:

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Review:

Aspects I enjoyed:

From the very first page I was intrigued by this story: Karou seemed like such a complex and interesting character that I immediately wanted to know more about her story. In addition, the first and last third of the book captivated my attention and made me not want to put the book down. I also liked learning about the magic/wishing system and about the other mystical races portrayed and their respecting backstories. One of the things I most enjoyed was learning about Madrigal and her place in the story towards the last third of the book. Overall, the plot was actually really intriguing and I do have to say I love Laini's writing style because it's so whimsical it felt like I was transported to another world.

Aspects I didn't enjoy:

The middle third of this book seemed to drag on forever, especially because this is when the love interest was introduced and I really wasn't interested in him at all. One of my bookish pet peeves is the "insta-love" trope and this book definitely had a lot of it. It also didn't help that I found the love interest to be incredibly boring and two dimensional, with practically no personality traits. 

Overall, I was a little bit disappointed in the book but not enough that I won't be reading the rest of the series. Hopefully, the other two books will appeal to me a bit more and I'll have an easier time reading them.