Review: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Publisher: Random House

Pages: 448

Received: Received from publisher through Netgalley

Release Date: April 10, 2012
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Goodreads Synopsis:

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark.

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead.  His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

My Review:

Wow, this book definitely rocked my socks off! I was nervous going into it, there was so much promise of mystery, action, and even a love story (how can one book have all that?) Seriously this book delivers all that and more! When I started out I didn't expect it to be as dark as it actually turns out to be, Robin starts this book on a really light note and I thought it would stick to that, but she definitely brings out the dark tale (it kind of came out of nowhere for me). Robin adds in so much action to this story, it was an intense read and had me creeped out at times while reading this (I was looking over my shoulder at a few points). 

There was so much to this story that I did not want to put it down. I wanted to keep going and find out what would happen next. The mystery was very well done, I found everyone had something to hide and you really couldn't tell who was trustworthy or not. Robin really has the characters develop slowly over the course of the story, slowly finding out more about each of them. And Nora was definitely my favourite character of them all, I really enjoyed the story being told from her perspective because I found that you understood the reasons for her actions a little better.

The secondary characters were also amazing. They added so much to the story, that they didn't seem that secondary. They added so much more to Nora's life, the best being the character of Elizabeth, who even though she is long gone, she is brought to life in the letters throughout the story.

What really captured my attention for this book was that most of the story takes place in a different country. I'm always interested in books that have a different setting to them, I'm so used to the same old settings that when I get to travel somewhere new in a book, I will jump at that chance. What also added to it was the history of the city. It was really interesting to go through the religious aspects and the history that was integrated into it.

Robin's writing style is just absolutely amazing and I can't wait to check out more of her books now!