Imma let you finish Twilight, but The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series is the best YA paranormal romance about a teenager and male-paranormal-who-is-super-old-but-looks-super-hot-and super young-so-we-swear-it’s-not-creepy of all time. Of all time.
I finally finished the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series on audio book !
Me, immediately after the audio ended.
On a sentence level, Laini Taylor’s writing is just so evocative and precise. Her words paired with Khristine Hvam’s nuanced performance made this book come to life.
I was a little hesitant when Taylor introduced an African American character and concepts of skin color and race into the story after the first books never touched on this.
But I do think she made it work well in the end
The overall plot fell a little flat for me. It felt like a lot of build up to with no pay off.
But I love the world, characters and romance Taylor creates so I legit didn’t care about the plot
Now let’s talk about the romance !
All I was waiting for in Dreams of Gods of Monsters was Karou and Akiva to get their HEA and Taylor teased it so much
Don’t even get me stared on all theUST throughout this entire book
Can we talk about Liraz for a second ?
While Liraz’ romance felt out of the blue I think it worked
Although as a rule I try not to think about the weird age gap / inter-species thing going on in this series.
 |
| Cause Karou is 18 and according to the wiki Akiva is 50… |
My other favorite part of this book was the human squad. In most paranormal books the humans friends either become irrelevant or get the paranormal glow up, but Mik and Zuzana came as they were and held their own the whole time.
Needless to say I was so ready to dive into Taylor’s new book, Strange the Dreamer
But I just found out sequel release date was been pushed back
To March 2017 !
Final Thoughts
Daughter of Smoke and Bone is an epic YA the blurs the lines between fantasy and paranormal with a love story so powerful it could save worlds. This has been one of my favorite series of all time and I feel really bad for dismissing it as just a European The Mortal Instruments way back in 2011.
I’m a lifelong reader who started blogging about YA books in 2011 but now I read in just about every genre! I love YA coming of age stories, compelling memoirs and genre bending SFF. You can find me talking all things romance at Romance and Sensibility.