Book Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

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I found this book for about $3 at one of the local thrift shops in town, immediately got excited, threw it in my basket and bought it. It sat on my shelves for about a year and then came the announcement of it being turned into a Netflix show. I'm one of those people who like to read the book before the show/movie comes out so I bumped it to the top of my 2020 last minute reads pile! I've seen this book around SO much. It's huge, it's big, it's popular. The back of the book itself has so many snippets of hyped reviews. Some even claiming it was the new series all Harry Potter fans have been eager to have! I don't think I'm exagerating when I say, "Everyone seems to have loved and obsessed over it".... so I decided it was high time that I joined the fan club.

That being said, it really fell flat for me unfortunately. I didn't think that it was comparable to Harry Potter. In fact it seemed that there were just a lot of similarities to the HP series (Alina's "powers" seemed to be drawn in inspiration from Harry's patronus) and even the Mortal Instrument series by Cassandra Clare. It didn't give me a unique and original story. Alina was quite annoying. I preferred the side characters to her.

As for the love interest...guys....I LOVE a bad boy character. I really freaking do. However, the Darkling didn't give me any notion that he was even going to be a love interest until he randomly kisses Alina 3/4 of the way in. It seriously came out of nowhere. Alina hadn't mentioned feeling that she nor he were interested in the other. They fell super flat for me in the love department. Now, that is why I was rooting for the best friend for the entirety of the book.

Over all, I found myself extremely confused with this book. Confusion over:

1. How anyone is rooting for the Darkling.

2. How anyone found this world building intriguing and magical.

3. How this book got popular enough to get it's own high budget TV show.

That being said, confusion can be solved with more information. This is only book one. It was good....just not as fantastic as I had hoped. My hopes were set too high with all the hype surrounding it. I didn't think it lived up to all its hype so far. I don't plan on buying the second book until they are once again available at any of the book stores in town (currently they are untrackable and I didn't like the first book enough to get it shipped). I'm really hoping that the series finds some traction and gets better.

Would I recommend this book? Not so much...if you want to be ahead of the show.

Book Rating: 3/5 Stars