en-Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo Review
Alina is a normal girl who grew up as an orphan with her best friend. They complete and protect each other in times of trouble. They're fighting side by side when their ship is under attack by a great and dark evil. Alina is desperate to save her best friend and a great power develops inside of her to save them both from dying.
Alina gets introduced to the Grisha world. Nothing is as easy as it seems. She struggles to controll her power. And she does not have much time to get controll over it. She needs it to save the world from a dark and evil danger. Will she succeed in time to protect the civilians from the threathening danger that lurks behind the corner?

I fell in love with the cover of this book. It has a mysterious vibe and I got attrackted to it immediately. The story was well put together and was built up step by step. I had trouble getting into the book. I didn't understand the whole Grisha world from the beginning and that made it harder for me to get into the story. This reduced my enthousiasm a little bit, but it reappeared after a while.
The author did an amazing job creating these fabulous characters. I could immediately relate to Alina's character because she was described so well and vividly. The Darkling has dark vibe hanging around him but I still fell for him. he is mysterious and soft all in one. Part of him is good, and some part isn't. Tt made me fall in love with him even more and I am not the only one. I did not have a connection with Mal from the beginning of the story, he rather annoyed me if I can be honest. Which I strangely liked about the story. I think you do not have to love each character from the beginning. Some characters are harder to love than other and that's what makes a story stronger. My dislike towards Mal disappears as the story goes on.
The background scenes in the story aren't always described and that's what kinda bothered me. The background scene is sometimes nice to get more into the story. This wasn't always the case and it sometimes felt like a boundary to get into the book. The story is well written but I just didn't feel a connection towards it.
It's a nice book to read but it did not blow me away. I hope I like the sequal more. I have the whole trilogy in my bookcase so I will definitely read them all. I give this book a 5 star rating because I think it is good but in my opinion it lacked some elements.
- Author: Leigh Bardugo
- Genre: Young Adult
- Themes: Friendship, reign, good and evil
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Published: may 2013
- Pages: 358 pages
- Rating: * * *