In my typical fashion, I started reading Holly Black books out of order. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in reading the Cruel Prince series (I have the first one sitting in my room as we speak) it’s just that I found this one on the shelves at B&N and picked it up, not even noticing that it was written by one of the biggest authors in fantasy right now.

The reason I picked it up was because I was looking for comp titles for my novel, and it looked like it would have everything I needed.

✓ Modern day urban fantasy

✓ Lots of criminal activity

✓ Cheeky FMC

✓ Dark themes

And it totally served.

It was a very plot focused book, staying one step ahead of the reader at all times. There was a little bit of romance, but there was so much going on that there wasn’t a lot of time to linger on the romantic parts. (Which I’m not complaining about. Some books have more time for it than others, and my interest in a book is not reliant on romance.) But like any well-written romance subplot, the main character’s relationship was a pivotal piece of the main plot without taking the spotlight.

The main character was not unlike my MC Selena. She was experienced in her craft, sarcastic, reckless at some times and calculated at others, and most importantly, exhausted. One of the things that I enjoy about adult novels is that the MCs have usually seen so much that they’re ready to call it quits, but the world isn’t ready for that to happen yet. That creates characters that we can relate to a little more than the ready-to-conquer-the-world characters that we see more in YA.

And of course the concept of the book revolving around magic shadows is totally awesome, and even without my need for comp titles I still would have picked it up off the shelf. For readers of grounded urban fantasy, this is a must read.