Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Shadow of the Wind

Wow, I absolutely loved the drama of it all—what a mesmerizing story. I’m honestly so confused why I even liked this as much as I did, but boy is it a page-turner. I could not stop reading and was immediately drawn into Zafón’s world.

I may be super off-base, but for some reason this story had a similar energy to The Beautiful Ones (or just Silvia Moreno-Garcia vibes generally) and A Little Life—and in its lighter moments, my childhood favourite The Thief Lord.

Content Warnings

elfeeza's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I was not expecting this book to freak me out. It started quite slow and rather boring for me but after that the book just delivered surprises one after another.

It was so craftily written and I would have to say that it is the best mystery/thriller I have ever read. I haven’t read that many but this one is by far the best.

The author obviously put so much thought into crafting the story and the way the author revealed how all the main players in the book are connected to each other is so well-written and planned out.

The build up freaked me out and got me curious at the same time. The climax of the story had me holding my breath in anticipation and got me questioning if I could speed up the audiobook anymore without me losing comprehension of the narration. The ending was satisfying and brought my heart down to normal again. And then, as much as I wanted to hate this book because I didn’t know going into it that it was from the gothic horror genre and I was got so frightened of the scary parts of this book that as I was reading/listening to them I told myself that I am not going to continue on with the series, I couldn’t and I had to give it 5 stars. This book did everything it was meant to do. It was that good. And now I need to catch my breath and calm down before I can read another book.

Will I continue on with the series? I still don’t know but one thing is for sure. I am curious.

Content Warnings

anna_i3's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

jeanniea's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

Great storytelling. Similar storytelling style to that of erin morgenstern. Story picks up about halfway thru. I enjoyed the ending of the book! There were a few unexpected surprises in the plot.

Content Warnings

kinga1204's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Content Warnings

hmlongstreet's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense slow-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? No

5.0

This book is long... and it took me forever to read. I have had this book since 2019 and I had just lost motivation to read it, as it dragged in some points. The book was also just genuinely long (or long to my standard as I never read books more then 450 pages). It is also one of those books with small words and small margins. However once I got back into it I could not put it down. All I can say is, oh my goodness this book is spellbinding. It is so beautifully written, that I found myself rereading a lot of paragraphs, just admiring the sentence structure. The long story was worth it though, as everything comes together to create a satisfying ending for the story. Every character in the novel gets an in-depth back story, which deepened my understanding of each characters personalities. So much detail is put into every line, which makes it such a gorgeous read.

Also, every character is connected. All of them.

Some issues I had personally were that since the story takes place in Spain, street names and locations are mentioned rather often and as a native English speaker I had one hell of a time trying to pronounce them. Some phrases were also left in Spanish and certain references were made that I just didn't understand. Maybe I should brush up on some Spanish history. Halfway through I did end up switching to an audiobook to pick up the pace of my reading (I am a rather slow reader) and was heavily embarrassed at how I had butchered names and places pronunciation.

I plan to read the rest of the books in the series as well, but I highly recommend this book it is just amazing!

Content Warnings

xlaraxk's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

More...