City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1) in Mortal Instruments & Infernal Devices Lovers!

Jun 25, 2009 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, read-for-high-school-book-club, fantasy, lgbtq, romance

"City Of Bones" is about fifteen year old Clary Fray, who one night decides to go to a night club with her friend Simon. While she is there she witnesses the murder of a "demon" by three punk looking teenagers. In the course of the next twenty four hours, her mom dissapears and she is almost murdered by a ugly looking demon that resembles a spider. Then, the three teenagers from the night club explain themselves to be Shadowhunters, an elite group of secret warriors that have the sole purpose of ...more

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May 07, 2011 Jessica *The Lovely Books* rated it it was amazing

Shelves: tbr-challenge, favorites

Dec2011-going to try reading this book again!!

Feb.2012
I liked city of bones the second time around. I actually finished the book ha.
Wtf moment.
Please Jace and Clary, don't be brother and sister!!!!
So gross:P ...more

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Jan 26, 2010 Erica Alyson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorite-books, favorite-series-book-1, paranomal

On to book 2!

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Sep 07, 2009 Sarah Crisan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: romance, magic

This is one of the BEST books I've read-EVER!!!

Some things in this world are unseen, but Clary Fray is the one who can see them. She can't believe it when she starts seeing demons, vampires, wizards,and more creatures that she was rasied to not believe in. When she meets Jace Wayland, a Shadowhunter, her world gets spun around as they try to decifer the puzzle of a lifetime to find her mother before her mother finds death.

- This the story will have you wanting to turn 10 pages at a time and wil ...more

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May 19, 2010 Jessica Nicole rated it it was amazing

Shelves: paranormal, favorites, awesome-heroines, best-boys

Read this review and others like it @ http://ramblingsonreadings.blogspot.c...

So this was a re-read for me this year, in anticipation of the movie (I’ll be posting that review Wednesday). I ADORE this series. Sure, everyone knows City of Fallen Angels was pretty weak compared to the rest (although it still has a ridiculously good rating on Good Reads, and I still enjoyed it), and there are some out there who are getting tired of the Shadowhunters and their drama. I am not one of those people. I Read this review and others like it @ http://ramblingsonreadings.blogspot.c...

So this was a re-read for me this year, in anticipation of the movie (I’ll be posting that review Wednesday). I ADORE this series. Sure, everyone knows City of Fallen Angels was pretty weak compared to the rest (although it still has a ridiculously good rating on Good Reads, and I still enjoyed it), and there are some out there who are getting tired of the Shadowhunters and their drama. I am not one of those people. I love Clare’s stories, writing style, characters…and she’s super good at what she writes.

Anyway, City of Bones is so fun because the writing is humorous, even though there is some really bad stuff going down. People get kidnapped, attacked, turned into rats, possessed by demons…there’s some pretty intense stuff in this book. There are also some ‘touchy’ subjects in this book: child abuse, homosexuality, incest…among other things. But Clare writes her characters with such great senses of humor (some of Simon and Jace’s conversations are hysterical). I think that was one of the things that originally drew me to these books was how funny some of the characters were.

Jace. Poor boy. He is one of those cases where he is all strong and sarcastic and untouchable, and then the girl just gets under his skin and he finally finds someone he can be vulnerable around. This book, you don’t quite get to that point, although you see the beginnings of it, but it really becomes a major point later on in the series. I love the way Clary can get under the armor he so carefully puts up. If I was going to fangirl about someone, Jace would be it.

A lot of this book is Clary (and the reader) learning backstory, so there are many times when someone sits Clary down and tells her this long drawn out monologue about the history of such and such. But I was always interested in these stories. Clare does a really good job of presenting the back story in really interesting ways, and you find yourself caring immensely about these characters that you know so little about.
I like Clary. She stands up for herself and wants to be involved in what’s going on, and she’s willing to sacrifice to protect those she loves. All in all she’s a pretty great heroine in my book.

I don’t think there is one secondary character that wasn’t interesting. Sometimes secondary characters get written just so that the main character has someone to interact with. But in City of Bones you see some specific storylines from the 2ndary peeps that adds another nice layer to the story, and also brings you to care more about the other characters and what happens to them.

The conflict is very strong, the characters are great fun, there are plenty of surprising twists, lots of interesting world building…this is an excellent addition to the Paranormal/Fantasy/Urban Fantasy genre.

Also, I cannot wait for the last book to come out. ...more

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Jul 08, 2011 Julie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub-reads, outdo-yourself-challenge-2013

This book started out a little generic to me with the girl doesn’t know she’s anything special and is trying to live a normal life when all of a sudden in her teenage years she learns that monsters exist and she’s part of their world. Something happens and a family member is in trouble and she has to learn about her place in the world she didn’t know existed in order to go to the rescue. But that is pretty much where the cliché teenage fantasy novel plot building ends. The world in this novel is This book started out a little generic to me with the girl doesn’t know she’s anything special and is trying to live a normal life when all of a sudden in her teenage years she learns that monsters exist and she’s part of their world. Something happens and a family member is in trouble and she has to learn about her place in the world she didn’t know existed in order to go to the rescue. But that is pretty much where the cliché teenage fantasy novel plot building ends. The world in this novel is unique and exciting with a lot of aspects I haven’t read about before. I admit the first part of this book took a while for me to follow because of the complex world building and learning about the Shadowhunters (demon hunters), the Downworlders (vampires, werewolves, fae, warlocks, etc), and everyone involved. There are items and concepts I am not familiar with and it took a while to grasp everything and have the world come together in my mind. But that is to be expected in a first book in a series, so I was patient with it.

This is a story where the people who you think are dead might not really be dead, family connections are not what they initially seem, and everyone has secrets. I’m not going to include any spoilers in this review, so I will try to keep everything vague. Clary is learning about her new Shadowhunter friends: brother and sister Alec and Isabelle, and Jace, who is an orphan and has been raised by Alec and Isabelle’s parents. Also, her best friend and mundane (completely human) best friend Simon refuses to be left out. These are our main characters. Jace is instantly super protective of Clary and that doesn’t get explained until later in the book when all the bombshells are dropped. And let me tell you there are some pretty cool bombshells. There’s also a bit of a Star Wars parallel between the characters but any more details than that would be spoilery. There’s also a lot of unrequited love between many of the characters so we can’t even really say there is a love interest or a love triangle because it is quite complex. Once the action gets started, everything moves pretty quickly with a lot of mystery and final realizations toward the end.

I gave this book 4 stars but it might be more of a 3.75 rounded up. The world building does take a while and all the major plot development happens at the very end of the story. It definitely builds up and makes you want to read the next book to know what happens. ...more

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May 09, 2009 Ashley Plonski rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favourites

City of Bones, enters on a good opening, with mystery and clarification. From this little opening Clary Fray is brought into the world of 'Shadowhunters', mysterious half-humans who slay demons. The book is full of adventures taken in the hand of finding her mother, love, and for the sake of it. Clary was just a normal human until she finds out that she too is apart of the shadowhunter world. As of 2012, there is a movie in production set to come out August 22, 2013. READ IT BEFORE YOU SEE IT. I ...more

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Nov 26, 2008 Harley Markey rated it it was amazing

this book...I have no words. I bought it before the movie came out but never got around to reading it. so I watched the movie and loved it, finally finding time to read the book. I am disappointed in the movie because the book was SO GOOD. there was so much detail and I read it in less than a week. definitely my favorite book.

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Aug 16, 2010 Carri rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2011

I liked it. I did not love it, but I have been reading alot of series lately and found that I usually think the first book is ok and then end up totally falling in love with the series after 2 or 3 books! So I am optimistic. I am looking forward to loving the rest of the books!

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Nov 02, 2010 Julie rated it it was amazing

I loved this series. They are about an exciting world going on all around us. I love the characters. The Author keeps you wanting more and never lets up.

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