I imagine that The Book Of Blood And Shadow will impress most of my friends, it just so happens that this is one of those books that appears on occasion which is well-constructed, well-written, clever and absolutely nothing that I want to read. I've seen this before and will surely see it again in the future, thankfully I'm getting better at spotting them early on - the only reason I finished this book was because it was provided by UK book tours for review purposes.

The story is about Nora who tries to solve the mystery around her friend's death and prove her boyfriend's innocence by travelling to Prague and following the clues from centuries-old manuscripts that lead her into a world of secrets, lies and conspiracies. It's just a shame that, for me, this was nowhere near as exciting as it sounds.

Though the books are nothing alike, the reading experience I had with The Book Of Blood And Shadow was almost identical to the ones I had with The Book Thief and Feed. This could be a good indicator of whether or not you should read this book. If you liked those two I just mentioned - and I know most people did - then you may have more patience with a novel like The Book Of Blood And Shadow. It is equally long-winded and spends a lot of time with the characters and the world before any of the main plot gets going.

Did you enjoy those discussions about politics and occasionally medicine found in Feed? Did you like the numerous flashbacks and stories throughout The Book Thief? Or did you grow tired of them like me? You see, Mira Grant, Markus Zusak and Robin Wasserman are all great writers in the very technical sense but I think they lose something from the story in being so... well, that's just how I see it. It's easy to be drawn in by them at first because you immediately recognise that they are talented at writing, the characters are always well-developed from the start. I like the characters, I like the writing, and I wait and wait for the story to get interesting but I'm often bored.

If you're okay with long sentences, a little too much of the stuff that we don't really care about like translations - or maybe that's also just me? - and the kind of story that doesn't hit you like WOWSHAZAM but creeps in slowly and steadily until you realise "oh yeah, so something seems to be going on now..." then this is your kind of book. Sorry, I'm not selling it too well, am I? I probably shouldn't be too negative as I am confident many of my friends on goodreads will love this kind of story. It's just way too slow and hard-going for me.