City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Give me a moment to catch my breath please. The wind was rather unexpectedly knocked out of me.

What a wild ride that was! Sorta like we hit all the Disney theme parks in one day.

Clary Fray is not an ordinary girl. She doesn't come from an ordinary family and her world is like nothing you'd imagine (you wouldn't, but Cassandra Clare did). All facts that have been meticulously hidden from Miss Fray until a chance encounter with a weapon wielding boy slap in the middle of doing his normal everyday job of dispensing with evil, oozing, murderous demons, alerts her to the fact that her life might just be anything but ordinary. The Shadow World, cloaked and disguised by glamour to the eyes of mortals, has coexisted with the only life and reality Clary has ever known- the life she always thought she was a part of. Now this new world and the horrors that lie within it have taken Clary's mother and the only hope of saving her lies in Clary's acceptance that nothing she knows of her life is true.

This was a wonderful book and a remarkable story. Like I said, it was a theme park of emotions that left a very dizzying after effect once the ride stopped. There was nothing predictable about the story to the tune of "I never saw that coming" punched me in the gut.

It was also a nice change to read something that didn't reek of Twilight but instead had the pleasant aroma of Harry Potter. The dialogue was superb. All these young, dark, gothy books riddled with angst made me forget that in real books people actually have something coherent to say. I will devour the next two books in the series after I have had some time to recuperate from this one.