Ashley Stoynaoff's Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bones by Laini Taylor

★ASHLEY STOYNAOFF'S REVIEW★

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1)
Author: Laini Taylor
Number of Pages: 432
Publication Information: Little, Brown and Company (Sept 2011)
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Shelf: Books I Bought
Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads:Here

Purchase: Here

Authors Website:Here

Summary from Goodreads:

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?

My Review:

“Once upon a time,
an angel and a devil fell in love.

It did not end well.”

Wow! That was the first word out of my mouth when I finished this book. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was absolutely delightful and utterly devastating.

I loved Karou’s character. She was fierce and mysterious and had me invested from the first page. The story starts out with Karou as an art student in Prague, and from there, the fascinating world that Taylor has created grows piece by piece. The strange errands, the teeth, the wishes, the chimeras; each piece had me flipping the pages, dying to know how they all fit together.

And then we meet the Angel, Akiva, and the story shifts to a fairytale kind of romance. The pacing changes—it slows—but, then I was sucked into the skin tingling, stomach fluttering, attraction between Akiva and Karou, and from then on, I hardly noticed the change in pace.

Each character was wonderfully unique and developed. Taylor takes care to introduce the story, the world, and each character, giving us, as the reader, the time to get to know it all without drowning us in dumps of back-story.

I have to mention, that during the last 60 pages or so, I was frustrated with all the flashbacks, but then the last chapter happened, and when I turned the last page I was left speechless.

Overall, the writing was fresh, the story was complex, and it was definitely an addictive read.