Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1)

Dear Authors,

Stop with the insta-love. I'm calling it out because I'm starting to notice a pattern with the books I despise. The insta-love will never cut it, not in this century or the next.

Overall, this book was shitty and I hated it.

Why, you ask? Well for starters, the shitty one-dimensional characters (shitty is my favorite word for things I hate, if you couldn't tell). I’ve never been a fan of characters that fall instantly in love. It’s a process and I like to see the progression. I wasn’t crazy about Karou or Akiva at all. In fact, I hated Akiva with a burning passion. The only thing interesting about him at all is his name, and even that is useless, because he's completely irritating and irrelevant to the point that I can't even look at his name without cringing.

In order for me to really love a book, I have to love the protagonist. I hated Karou. She has absolutely no character, no sense of self whatsoever. What does she like? I don't fucking know. She likes drawing and that's pretty much all she does. Who is she? I sure as hell don't know, because she does is talk about "ohmygod Akiva Akiva is so hot and I shouldn't feel attracted to him but I do, ohmygod."

Akiva the angel. No. Please. stop. I didn't know even one detail about him, besides the fact that he's some kind of fallen angel or some shit like that. LT's writing is beautiful and dreamy, don't get me wrong, but it makes no sense. I was *confusion* throughout the whole book.

Zuzana was loud, crazy, incredibly thirsty, and I like her because she and I have 2/3 in common with each other. She was the only character in this book that actually had character. LT seriously took away the meaning of the word "cHaRaCtEr," by deriving anything resembling personality from each person. Like I said, a waste of time. If an author can't make me invested in the characters, than I will not invest in their book. Plain and simple.

The "enemies to lovers" trope? Nope. Laini Taylor did not pull it off. There is no point writing enemies to lovers if it's going to be insta-love. We do not stan such nonsense and bullshit in this house.

Good things about this book:

*Awkward silence*

*ambulance wails in the distance*

Mm. Yikes.

Okay so since I hate being a bitch sometimes, I guess there is one thing that I really loved about this. This book has some really magical, nostalgic feel to it that I can't really describe. In all honesty, LT's writing is angelic and lovely, but the content is utter horseshit. I don't care about any of the characters whatsoever. The only character that I would ever invest myself in would be Zuzana. Everyone else can die and I would probably laugh.

The world building was utterly horrific, I just ... cannot even begin to talk about this, because then I'll just get mad all over again. I didn't understand what was happening at all. And if I had understood what was going on, I probably would've put the book down sooner.

And again, the typical titles:

Daughter of ...

Queen of ...

Children of ...

King of ...

Please. Fucking. Stop. I am going insane.

______ of ______ and ______

Now let's play a little game. Let's see how many of these titles I can think of at the top of my head that have this fucking title adaption:

1. Lord of Shadows

2. Queen of Air and Darkness

3. Throne of Glass

4. Crown of Midnight

5. Heir of Fire

6. Queen of Shadows

7. Empire of Storms

8. Tower of Dawn

9. Kingdom of Ash

10. City of Brass

11. Children of Blood and Bone

12. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

13. Daughter of Smoke and Bone

14. Daughter of Blood and Starlight

15. Daughter of Gods and Monsters

16. A Court of Thorns and Roses

17. A Court of Mist and Fury

18. A Court of Wings and Ruin

19. A Court of Frost and Starlight

20. A Court of Silver Flames

21. Sisters of Sword and Song

22. House of Salt and Sorrows

It's not unique, it's not creative, it's annoying. If you can't even bother having some sort of creativity in a title, then how can I trust that you'll have any sort of creativity in your entire book? Have an enticing title like This Savage Song, To Kill A Kingdom, These Violent Delights, or Our Dark Duet to pull the reader in.

Overall, this book was a complete waste of time. It wasn't boring, but it also wasn't stellar, and I don't invest my time in non-stellar novels. This was my first LT novel, and because of this, Strange the Dreamer is now pushed further back on my TBR list.