Genre: Adult Fantasy
Pages: 304
Published: 2022
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Publisher’s Synopsis:
“In Charlie Hall’s world, shadows can be altered, for entertainment and cosmetic preferences—but also to increase power and influence. You can alter someone’s feelings—and memories—but manipulating shadows has a cost, with the potential to take hours or days from your life. Your shadow holds all the parts of you that you want to keep hidden—a second self, standing just to your left, walking behind you into lit rooms. And sometimes, it has a life of its own.
Charlie is a low-level con artist, working as a bartender while trying to distance herself from the powerful and dangerous underground world of shadow trading. She gets by doing odd jobs for her patrons and the naive new money in her town at the edge of the Berkshires. But when a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie’s present life is thrown into chaos, and her future seems at best, unclear—and at worst, non-existent. Determined to survive, Charlie throws herself into a maelstrom of secrets and murder, setting her against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, shadow thieves, and her own sister—all desperate to control the magic of the shadows.
Holly Black makes her adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.”
My Review:
I can’t lie, this is probably one of my most disappointing releases for this year. While it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t great either. It had all the potential for greatness but I feel like it just missed the mark. It lacked the spark that I think we all loved in her previous work. I know this is an adult debut so I won’t make any judgements based on comparisons. As of writing this review, I read this book three months ago and I can’t honestly remember one thing about it. That just doesn’t bode well for my experience with it. And if you are wondering why I didn’t review it at the time, it’s most likely because I didn’t feel like I had anything I needed to say about it. It was just meh. I don’t really have anything specifically negative to say but I don’t really have anything specifically positive to say either. I was an ok story that I liked enough to read in its entirety but not remarkable enough that it has stuck with me after a few months. Will I be continuing this series, I’m undecided. But if you like this author I’d say give this book a try, you may have a better experience than I did, as I’m sure others have.
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