Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)

by Leigh Bardugo

Put on your pretty clothes and wait for the next kiss, the next kind word. Wait for the stag. Wait for the collar. Wait to be made into a murderer and a slave.

I think I was actually writing into something deeper than I realized in this moment. I was in a very bad, very scary relationship when I wrote Shadow and Bone. I thought of myself as a smart, confident, independent person, and I was so ashamed of where I'd ended up. When I first started working on the book that would become Shadow and Bone, I didn't know what my future would look like or the way that book would change my life. All I knew was that I was stuck and scared. Writing Shadow and Bone helped remind me that I could set my mind to a task and accomplish it, that there was more to me than a frightened woman spending her days walking on eggshells. So maybe these lines were actually me standing at the crossroads, choosing whether to give in to fear and inertia—or fight my way out.