A review by mairelon
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4.0

A friend of mine gifted me a copy of this book for my birthday and insisted that I'd love it. I absolutely did but oh my goodness was it a stressful experience. I have never before been so mad at a character's world or circumstances as I have with this book. And to be honest the things that stressed me out the most weren't the fantastical elements like the mysterious figures and the haunted mansion, but more the true to life struggles of war and corruption. I would rather take on a ghost any day of the week than a corrupt policing system.

There were two lines within the book that felt like they were written to make the reader shut the book in disbelief and I'm not ashamed to say I had just that reaction. Some of the endgame reveals were made fairly obvious from the beginning, there was enough there that I found the ending to be truly shocking. The entire final third of the book had me white-knuckling it as you're hit with revelation after revelation but it all feels earned after all our characters went through.

There are still a few plot threads left dangling tantalizingly
SpoilerGHOST HOUSE GHOST HOUSE
and I hope these are explored in more depth in later books.