REVIEW: Daughter of Smoke and Bone (#1) - Laini Taylor

Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone (#1)
Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Format: Paperback
Pages: 418 Pages
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads Blurb

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 otherworldly 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 colour. 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?

Thoughts

I have had the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series on my bookshelf for ages, and Little Book Owl on YouTube with a bunch of others decided to do a read-along. So I decided it was time for me to get the books off my shelf and start reading them.

The first half of the book I felt was slow-going, like Karou, you are left in the dark, you don't know how she ended up in the care of Brimstone, or who her parents are. So in a sense the first part of the book you mirror Karou as you know as much as she does about her life.

The second half of the book was just full steam ahead, you find out the truth about Karou's origins and her relationship with Akiva as well as how she came to be with Brimstone. At this point, I was just hooked and just couldn't put the book down.

I found myself loving a load of characters in this book, Zusanna was just a fantastic character, and Karou was great as well.
At the minute I'm not fully on board with Karou and Akiva's relationship, yes I know there is a backstory so it isn't technically a case of instalove but I was still tentatively shying away from them.

Overall, this is a book that you need to stick with, because once you get to the second half of the book the story really kicks in.