Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor
Goodreads Rating: 4.11
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Pages: 417
Reviewed by: Nicole

Around the world, black hand prints 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 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?

I got this book from BEA and then again from Audiobook Sync. I decided to go with the audiobook version because I have way too many physical books to read and the audiobook gave me a better chance of getting to it sooner.

I think this had to have been one of the best audiobooks I've heard by far. I absolutely loved the narrator who did a great job providing different voices for each of the characters including the accents for Karou's Czech friend and ex-boyfriend. This narrator totally made me love this book, not that it wouldn't have on its own merits, but it was this super added bonus.

I really did love this book. I loved Karou and her name and her sarcastic humor as she evaded questions on her blue hair and mysterious errands. I loved her friends and how she used her wishes on itches and eyebrows. It seemed so fun until you find out what all of her errands are about.

I can't tell you I figured out what all the teeth were for until it was spelled out for us. I liked that we were guided into things in this book it wasn't just, BAM here's some information now figure it out, or even just spelling it out for you. It was kinda like playing Blues Clues but less obvious. This book seemed to set you up for the rest of the trilogy.

When I say that this book was a set up, I mean that in a really good way. There are some set up books or movies, that are totally boring (Lets not even talk about the second Pirate's Movie), but this one was a perfect stage setting book because you were provided with enough information to be able to have this function as its own book. Most scene setting books lack the meat to be on their own but this had everything.

My friend described this book as fantasy for people who didn't like fantasy (which we all know I fit perfectly) and this totally was. It had all the elements of fantasy without making me feel totally disjointed about this other world. The Chimera and the Angels have this whole crazy story that we haven't even begun to touch upon. This book accomplished everything it needed to divided into parts to make it easier to comprehend.

I know this review totally beat around the bush about what happened with the characters and everything, but I think that with this book, the most important part is discovering these things on your own.