Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1) by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1) by Laini Taylor

Goodreads Synopsis
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 grows 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 beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery 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?

I had heard such good things about this one and there was a lot of hype surrounding it. That can be a good thing or a bad thing in my experience, but I was excited to try it because an ancient war between angels and demons sounded amazing. Except I did not like this one. It was dry and boring and there was nothing I actually enjoyed except maybe the first 5% of the book where Karou made her ex boyfriend super itchy in inappropriate places. That was it.

I gotta say: I wasn't too sure what the plot was while I was reading this. It was all pretty confusing and felt very fragmented without even using the actual breaking points that were written in. For example, Kaz. He was there in the beginning and seemed to play such a big role and then ... nothing. It felt like there were three stories in this: the beginning was one, the middle was one, and the end was one. And none of them had complete arcs just sort of dribbled out and were supposed to be connected. While they were "connected," it wasn't enough for the type of "a-ha" that I think the author was going for.

I wanted to like the angel war but there was nothing to even make it worth my while? There was maybe a couple mentions of it but nothing substantial to make me want to find out more about it. I feel like it was a back story and a reason for Karou and Akiva to meet. There was nothing spectacular about it. But I did love the lore that was used to describe how angels and demons both were created. And the two different stories for their creation were pretty awesome. Which is why my rating isn't 1 star.

Karou is an orphan who works for a bunch of chimera and doesn't question what they want with her or why they are making themselves present to her when it is clear they do not like to talk to humans. Then she just automatically trusts this random dude she meets that tries to kill her and completely lets her guard down around him. After like a day. And he admitted he was following her. Yeah, that seems like someone to trust.

I honestly thought Karou, for how much she claimed to think of Brimstone and co as family, she would have more urgency than sitting around doing nothing and chilling with Akiva. Their love was just not there for me. There was that hint of Romeo and Juliet and it made me want to stab myself.

Akiva was annoying. One minute he wants to kill Karou, then he decides that because he is thinking about her so much, he should just abandon his life and his siblings to find Karou one more time. WTF.

When we did get to the last third which was completely history and flashbacks, which annoyed the crap out of me, I was hoping we would get to know Akiva and Karou more but nope. It was all just insta-love a thousand times over. It was ridiculous. I was not impressed.

Overall: 2/5 stars. It just didn't interest me. It should have but it did not.