'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor has to be the best book in the YA, Fantasy genre I've read all year. In fact, it was so good that within minutes of finishing up the last page I swung into the Kindle Storefront and preordered the 'Days of Blood and Starlight' - book two due out on November 6th.

Main character Karou with her natural blue hair, hand drawn chimaera comics and secret double life is hard to resist. Likeable and dubbed with a name that literally translates into the very thing she comes to embody its easy to become submerged in her story and get swept away as the story unfolds.

Even the supporting characters like Brimstone, Akiva, Zuzana and Issa are vital to the story and have a tendency of being much different and more complicated than how they're originally presented. With the entire cast of characters serving their own desires and purposes genuinely, this book quickly comes to life as a story filled with everyone fighting their own internal battles while struggling to shape a better world - all with Karou somehow caught unaware and in the middle. 

If you're looking for the next, great fantasy with a romantic flair, you can't let this title pass you by... but you might want to wait until early November when you can pick up both titles and save yourself the wait!