Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
(Little, Brown, 2011)


Summary from publisher:
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 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 is about to find out.

Oh....my....goodness!  I had been hearing since September that I HAD to read this book.  One of my students read it right after it was released and couldn't stop talking about it.  I finally read it last week, and she was completely right.  I was hooked right away and couldn't put it down!  Now I have to wait until November to read the sequel!

Taylor gives the new trend in YA lit - angels - a new twist with this story.  She also makes demons endearing, which is not an easy thing to do with the demons/monsters in this book.  I loved how this book made me think and wonder about what was going to happen next; there were definitely some unexpected twists and turns over the course of this story.  Of course, this book also made me want blue hair.

One of the things that made this book intriguing (though could be a turn-off for some readers) was the way Taylor would switch perspectives. Sometimes I had to adjust my reading to figure out whose story I was reading at a given time, but I didn't mind, because reading more than just Karou's story gave the plot a depth that would have been lacking otherwise.

Go read this book.  Right now.  It's that good.  And who could resist that cover?