Road Trip: Best Book This Month

YA Highway's question of the week is a fun one: What's the best book you've read this August?

I already mentioned this book a few posts ago, but this gives me an opportunity to sing its praises again, because I thought Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone was absolutely spectacular. Here's the description:

(From Goodreads) Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

I had already read Laini Taylor's National Book Award-nominated Lips Touch: Three Times and was impressed with her beautiful writing and the wild inventiveness of her stories, so I was pretty excited when my CP brought me an ARC of her new book. And boy, I was sucked in from the first page. Karou is strong and mysterious, and the author doles out her background in little tidbits that make you want to read on as quickly as possible. And the writing, as expected, is gorgeous. It make me want to go to Prague and eat goulash, to wander through Marrakesh and haggle with shopkeepers. The originality of the story blew my mind--I've never read anything like this before. And the pieces of her puzzle fit together beautifully in the end, which is when you gnash your teeth and say Why can't I have written this book???

Daughter of Smoke & Bone comes out on September 27th, and if you like things that are awesome, I highly recommend you pick this one up. I know I'll be buying copies for friends and family. Laini Taylor is an author to keep on your radar.