A review by booktribes
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

My first fantasy read in world building. First of all, I 
was hesitant about reading fantasy bcs i thought i 
would DNFed it. Imo reading this genre takes a lot of 
creativity to read and to be able to imagine 
something that is apart from our reality. As soon as i 
read it, this book wasnt that difficult at all to imagine. 
It's literally based on a war and places just like 
reading classic historicals. 
Rating:  🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 
Spoiler alert. 


I like the Grishaverse, their uniforms: purple, dark 
blue, red and how each colour can be treated 
differently by their kefta. I love our female 
protagonist, Alina Starkov. I love her character 
development throughout the book, how she became 
stronger and being the sun summoner. Ngl my 
predictions were all the way wrong. Here's what i 
thought would have happened: 
1 . She rules the kingdom 
2. Mal died 
3. She ends up with the Darkling 
DIDN'T HAPPEN! 
I never would've expected she ended up with her best 
friend, Mal bcs he's less narrated than the Darkling. 
Also, he didn't even made a move on Alina, he just 
confessed to her. 
And the Darkling, i love his charms and his powers. I 
did not expect they would kiss so soon. I was like 
"Wait where's your pov on all this? Why are you kissing her?!" and i realized i got used to reading 2 or 
3 person povs. Also, that was a bad move the part 
where he put on Alina's stag collar. I searched it and 
felt bad for her Didn't liked him after that. Also 
what happened to his mother?! 
The book kinda left me hanging. I noticed when im at 
90% percent and Alina still haven't ruled the kingdom 
but i like the way the author left it hanging like that. 
Overall, i only love Alina's character development. My 
first fantasy read was enjoyable and 11m omw to read 
the sequel.