Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis: London. Girls are disappearing. They've all got one thing in common; they just don't know it yet. Sixteen-year-old Lily was supposed to be next, but she's saved by a stranger; a half-human boy with gold flecked eyes. Regan is from an unseen world hidden within our own, where legendary creatures hide in plain sight. But now both worlds are under threat, and Lily and Regan must race to find the girls, and save their divided city.
Review: This was such a good book. I was a little sceptical about it as the tag line of the book is 'a must read for fans of The Mortal Instruments' and, since I loved that series I was a little unsure about how it would stand out from the series. It is similar in the fact that there are a lot of 'monsters' throughout but they're not the traditional demons and monsters of folklore that Cassandra Clare used in her series and that made it really interesting for me and made it stand out from her series.
The plot is so good in this book. The idea of blood type being the key to everything was really intriguing and is something I haven't seen before. This aspect of the plot was started off really early on in the book which was really nice. I've kind of got used to having twenty pages of minimal action and lots of set-up so to find a book that has action within the first few pages that sets up the rest of the book nicely. There are lots of little plot points as well that lead you along - like the mysterious person tracking Lily's online movements for example. That plot point is thrown up early on and you kind of forget about it until the person behind it is revealed which is a sign of a good writer in my eyes. If you can drop the hints and clues and still leave your readers in the dark, you're on to a winner.
I love the characters. Lily is so strong and stubborn and just a bad-ass! She is so focused on helping other people - whether it's the people in her father's latest court case or Regan; she wants to help them and will do anything to accomplish that. She's not weak willed and takes all the strangeness of Regan's world in her stride which is a really nice characteristic to see in a character. I love also love the fact that she's a hacker and that ability is prominent throughout the book and is something a little different and so was really interesting to read and see how Inglis used it throughout the book. Regan is so sweet. He's also got that stubborn and head strong personality trait which means the two clash quite a bit because of their desire to protect each other, so you get the arguments but you also get little fluffy moments which are really sweet. I loved Regan's protective streak. You could really see the relationship between Regan and Lily developing over the course of the book and, from quite a rocky beginning where Regan didn't really trust her, you can see him really trying to protect her and almost make up for the fact that her life has pretty much been derailed, despite Lily not seeing it like that.
This is another book that uses London as it's setting which I love. Being from the UK, it's not very often that you get a book set in the UK, most are set in America so it's quite different for me to find a book that's set in the UK. It was really interesting how Lucy Inglis used London and it's transport system to create a world for all these mystical creatures to live in, drawing on historical knowledge and mixing them with familiar landmarks made it really interesting for me to read, especially since I live in the UK and so know many of these landmarks and I could really see how these creatures would appear in the places mentioned in the book.
The 'family' that has been created for Regan was really sweet and needs a mention. Regan doesn't initially view them as a family because his job means that he's likely to lose them in some way, but Lily really helps him to see that that's not the case. Lucas and Elijah are almost Regan's parents - looking out for him in their own special way and he's always checking in with them and so it's a really interesting dynamic to see between the three characters. I loved Mickey the diviner - he seems so much fun and nothing really fazes him, he just makes a joke out of it. He's the kind of person I'd want as a friend. I think all the characters in this book are really well developed and believable and I loved all of them.
This book was only released last year and I think it's her debut. It's such a good book with an intriguing plot and amazing characters. If you love The Mortal Instruments series then you need to read this book.
Image from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18523130-city-of-halves ~ no Copyright intended
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