Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Book of Night

I really enjoyed this book! Holly Black is the best when it comes to morally gray FMC. I loved that our heroine had flaws that but not in the "not like other girls" kind of way, Charlie was a lot of fun and I loved following her even when she made dumb decisions. She stayed on brand for sure.

This was a very slow book at first, I knew little to nothing about it when I started reading so I wasn't expecting it to be twisty-turny, pleasantly surprised for sure! I had some parts of the ending figured out early on and thought I had it all figured puy. I was pretty smug about it ngl, but the unexpected hit and was so satisfying.

The one thing I don't love is I went into this book thinking it was a stand alone, probably my fault for not researching it first, so the cliff hanger was a doozy.

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cutie314's review against another edition

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dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

First two chapters were pretty rough but once I got through them I got through the entire book in just a couple of hours. If you like the main character (who likes to choose the worst possible solution to every problem), you'll probably like the book. If you don't, then you won't.

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lollyac01's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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marieclimbsc's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Very slow start, 100 good pages before it became bland and made little sense. Main character could have been explored so much more. It felt like this book had been written in 2 days and never re-read after.

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blamelucy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It's honestly fantastic. Just the kind of Holly Black fantastic you hope for when picking up one of her books. World building, intelligent young adult fiction writing genius. No cheap tricks to keep readers hooked. Just very very fantastic writing.

Holly Black continues to be fantastical fiction queen.

<Spoiler> Scary at points but I'm easily scared. Twists in unexpected ways.

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wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

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rinku's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Book of Night is actually the first book by Black that I’ve read – besides reading the Spiderwick Chronicles as a child but I don’t remember anything about them. I wasn’t blown away by this novel, but it was a nice read, mainly because of the dark atmosphere and the interesting world.

In this book, we follow Charlie as she navigates a world in which shadows can be manipulated and are used for many shady things. Charlie soon finds herself in the centre of those because she goes on a mission to find a mysterious book. Her past helps her greatly with this task since she was once a thief and a criminal herself. The thief stuff and the few action scenes were honestly my favorite thing about this novel since they’re just so cool. Much of Charlie’s backstory is interesting as well, but it was a bit boring that much of it was told, just like the backstories of other characters. Furthermore, I always find a bit funny when YA authors write adult books because what makes books “adult” in their opinion is mentioning abuse, drugs, and sex often. This was here a bit over-the-top, and I’m sure there are other ways to make a book more adult. Some things were also quite predictable since the plot is a bit average, but I generally liked it.

I don’t know what I think about the ending though. What I did like about it was how

Charlie’s tricking Salt

but many other things about it were not so understandable. With all the plot twists and revelations, like

Vince being Remy’s shadow and not Remy or the hierophant being the murderer, apparently

, I was more irritated than shocked by them. Especially the second thing came a bit out of the blue for me. I also don’t like the last chapter and have the feeling it was only added to have the possibility for writing a second book.

Like I’ve mentioned at the beginning, the dark atmosphere created throughout the novel was so great. I imagined many scenes taking place in the dark or at least when it’s dusk/dawn, even when this wasn’t the case. The general world was interesting as well since I always love to read about urban fantasy novels where magic just exists, and we see how it’s dealt with in the modern world. Nevertheless, the world building was sometimes a bit irritating, and I struggled with imagining some things, like how a shadow is able to attack a person.

I don’t have strong opinions on the characters, I think they were all okay. Charlie seemed a bit try-hard edgy to me at the beginning but after the half, I started to warm up with her. I honestly found her past life and how she was back then more interesting, and I would love to read a whole book about it. Vince was a fascinating character from the beginning, but I didn’t care for Remy’s POV at all and don’t think that it was necessary. What I find a bit sad though is that mostly only men are part of the conspiracy and hence play a bigger role.

I’m not sure why we need a sequel to Book of Night since the story is nicely wrapped up at the end, even though it’s a bit open. Still, I wouldn’t mind reading more about Charlie since I started to like her quite a lot but I’m not the biggest fan of the situation she was put in at the end.

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justkarlah's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is one of those books that took me a long time to get to, but once I actually started reading it, I actually enjoyed. It's different from the usual Holly Black books we're all used to (especially if you only read her fae books). Still, the idea of magic existing through our shadows was interesting and felt pretty unique.

The pace picked up pretty quickly for me, only took a couple chapters of explanations and backstory to get the plot going. I did find that some of the flashbacks got a little boring later on in the book, but I get that they were included to give us more context on people's decisions. There are things that definitely could have been explained by weaving them into the story instead of going back and forth between the past and the present though.

Some of the twists were predictable, but it was still a surprise to read about them.

The little hints throughout the beginning that hinted at Vince being "different"? Loved it.

I love the morally gray characters that Holly Black comes up with. Sometimes I want to read about a person who's not always doing the right thing, a person who does things for themselves and wouldn't be considered a hero most of their lives. Makes them feel more realistic.

With that being said, Charlie was not as interesting as a character as Vince was.

I'm hoping Vince gets more of a main spotlight in the sequel. From what we got at the end of the book, his personality reversed to a different version of himself once he was tied to Charlie, so I hope we get to see his personality grow as he gets to know her again.

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would! It's definitely different, and there are things that I wish would have been expanded on more/had more written about them, but all in all, it was a good read. I'm looking forward to the sequel!

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