Shadow and Bone (Grishaverse Book 1)

Annnnnd, I've decided to re-read Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse series instead of starting one of my many, many (many) TBR piles. So here we are. Re-reading "Shadow and Bone".

Mostly because I want to re-watch season one again on Netflix (which stayed on the Top Ten list for almost two whole weeks, if not longer--and the book itself raised back to the top of most bought/read lists on Amazon and Goodreads alike, as it should).

["Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart."]

And due to the fact that I just watched season one a little over a week ago (was it really only a week?), I was able to speed read through this novel pretty well.

I was never suuuuper on the Darklina ship, even when I first read it about two years ago (we all loooved the bad-boy trope, but as you know, I'm more of the best-friends-to-lovers trope). And the only think that the Netflix Darkling adaptation did for me was the fact that it was Ben Barnes (#finemakemeyourvillain). But rereading S&B helped a bit (though it also helped see why people don't ship Melina--he's kinda toxic at times).

Watching the Netflix show already gave me the refresher I needed about Book One, but the details I forgot about really, really helped (like exactly how Alina finally chose herself and accepted her powers--after spending years picking Mal--and how she was a fucking badass, even before she remembered/got her Grisha powers). Annnnnd really made me want to reread the entire series (the entire universe).

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