Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (2011)

Pages: Hardcover, 432 pages

Price: £14.99

Buy on Amazon UK

Reviewer rating: 

5

Pros: 

Fluid prose, compelling characters, good plot, and an amazing new world

Cons: 

None

Featuring necklaces made of wishes; an underground shop dealing in teeth; magical tattoos; a wishbone on a cord, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE is a thrilling story about Karou and her secret life as an apprentice to a wishmonger. Karou manages to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to an inhuman creature who deals in wishes and is the closest thing she has to family. Her life is surrounded by mysteries she is desperate to unveil.

Beautifully written, this story had me turning the pages from the very start. I loved the humour that the story starts with, and that this humour sits alongside bitter-sweet heartbreak, the bonds of friendship and a dark mystery. It's wonderful when something I read feels different from anything else that's currently available, and this was just such a book. I have read fantastical tales like this, but never in the YA genre and never quite so wonderfully executed.

Laini Taylor's a brilliant storyteller, I say story-teller because this book makes her more than an author. There are few people in my mind that I like to think of as storytellers, the kind of authors you could imagine sitting in a lounge telling you a story fresh out their imagination. They create characters so vivid and real you feel you could reach into your mind and touch them.