This book was recommended to me because I liked and disliked The City of Bones series. I completely loved this book, the world was amazing and I loved the story. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough! I want this to become a series, though I know it will never happen. Recommend this book if you like world building!

3.5/5

I think I was intrigued by the tease of a mystery in the blurb ("Darcy Jones doesn't remember anything before the day she was abandoned as a child outside a Chicago firehouse") but I honestly am not entirely sure what compelled me to check it out and what actually unraveled surprised me. This was probably a case where NOT reading the synopsis worked in my favor, adding additional tension to the story.

Since I don't want to spoil too much, I can tell you that about the first quarter is Darcy living a normal life but with a startling prologue that has you waiting for the other shoe to drop. Before that though, it means following Darcy attending school, doing homework, working after-school, hanging out with friends, trying not to draw attention to herself. This also means the introduction of the mysterious Conn, the new kid at school who seems to be closely observing Darcy. Once the other shoe does drop though, the book is off on a gallop into an alternate world where she begins to get some answers about her past while also navigating a shaky future.

I don't really know how I feel about Darcy. She narrates the book so we're in her head, getting introduced to the new reality at the exact same time as her but I don't know if I ever felt really bonded with her, the way I do with my favorite characters. There is also the expected love interest (the rather personality-free Conn) as well as Darcy's delightful friends who pop up to play an unexpected role.

I do have to give Rutkoski props for this book being "compulsively readable" (quoting the goodreads blurb there) as I flew through it. I read it in only a couple of hours while listening to a football game and was thoroughly absorbed even if I wasn't as connected to the characters as I would have liked.

Cover: I like the blues and how it hints at an alternate dimension. If I knew the Chicago skyline, I would want to compare what we see here on the cover to what is actually existent.

I picked this book up on a whim at the library because of the cover. I do not typically read a lot of paranormal fiction, but I thought an alternate universe might be fun so I would give it a try. Once I read the opening paragraph I knew I was in for a treat. There was humor and excellent writing as well as fully developed characters. I certainly hope that there will be more in the series - Rutkoski left it wide open so I am sure that there will be more. The pages fairly flew by so it didn't even seem like a 400 page novel although the ending was very rushed.

The one thing I would change if I could was the instant memory recall on the part of the protagonist. She has one conversation and bam recalls everything. It was a little too convenient.

The inclusion of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was a stroke of brilliance! I love how Rutkoski weaved the poem into the story and really made you think about the poem. Even if you are not familiar with the poem, you really got a sense of what the poem was about and what some of themes of the poem are. I think a reading of the poem beforehand will definitely provide a deeper reading of this book, but it is not necessary.

The pacing of the book was excellent. I never felt the lag that so often happens around the 200 page mark. I kept turning the pages faster and faster waiting to see just where the book was headed. It was a little obvious, but satisfying nonetheless.

I enjoyed the fast-paced plot, but some of the dialogue was bit awkward, and the premise itself was shaky. (There were shades in Chicago in the past, but aren't any more. But what about elsewhere? Why is Chicago the central location of all shades? How could one fire wipe them out so that they're almost extinct in our time line?) Once I let go of my issues over consistency and realism, I sat back and enjoyed the story. I'd recommend it for a quick, fun read for fans of paranormal love stories, but for the discerning reader who wants to be able to fully buy into a scifi book, it's best to skip this one.

(Although not scifi/fantasy, Rutkoski's book The Winner's Curse was fantastic. She's a great writer, despite her flaws in The Shadow Society.)

First I don't know anything about this book. I planned to read this because I love her Winner Trilogy and I am currently waiting for the third book - the conclusion.

Back to the book, I only thought that she is just trying to regain her memory, nothing unusual... or paranormal. And I only thought that her hand disappearing is just an illusion or a hallucination but when Conn cuffed her and she was on fire, literally. That's the time I don't know what is really going on. And then she disappeared.

It turned out that she's a Shade (invisible, but visible SHADOW). The Shades are responsible for the Great Chicago Fire. And on the alternate world (wherein the Fire didn't happen) she's imprisoned by the IBI and is asked to spy inside the Society.

The book is a great read but the ending is still open for another book especially since

Spoiler

the antagonistic Shades are still lurking in the alternate world

.

A different book by the author of the Kronos Chronicles – Cabinet of Wonders, The Celestial Globe and The Jewel of the Kaldrash. This one is about parallel worlds and a young woman who is living in our world, not knowing she is not of our world. A new guy starts at school and she falls for him, only to have him arrest her and take her back to her world. It is a world with humans and shades. Shades don’t have to eat, can disappear at will and live a lot longer than humans. There is currently an uneasy peace between the humans and shades but it will not last, the humans want revenge for a shade attack on a hospital where innocents were killed. Darcy, the girl who doesn’t know she is a shade, finds out and starts to learn about the things she can do. She has to report to Conn (the guy from school who turned out to be a law officer in the parallel world) but feels like she can’t trust him or the shades. She inadvertently finds out about a new shade attack and tries to prevent it. This is a great read, lots of action and a look at relationships and trust and versions of the truth.

This got better at the end but it took me a long time to get into the groove of the story.

I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it had the whole forbidden love aspect that so many YA novels do, but it didn't overwhelm the story, nor was it the main plot line. From the first line, I was instantly drawn in, and the characters kept me reading. Darcy's friends are so realistic, and supplemented the story with their humor. Darcy wasn't a damsel in distress and I appreciated that. Sure, she was thrown by her new surroundings and such, but she was resourceful and didn't take crap from anyone, yet was also caring and wanted to do what was right. Good book overall.

I won this book off FYA and finally got around to reading it to finish off my break.

I couldn't decide if it was a three star or four star read, but since it was compelling enough to make me think about it for longer than two seconds, I went with four stars.

I like that this is a stand alone book. Or at least, it's not obviously serialized with a cliffhanger ending or anything like that.

I liked the fantasy elements of an alternative world and the whole set up. The concept of Shades is great and, fantastical as it was, shared a lot of parallels with the real world.

I'm just not sure I liked Darcy, the main character. There were two many moments when I wanted to just smack her a little and tell her to get her butt in gear and stop playing stupid. Just be smart, girl. I liked her by the end, but she was an irritating mix of intelligent and just plain naive.

The romance was a rocky start in the beginning (actually, the first 30 pages were kind of a slow start), but once things got cooking, it was great fun. It's not insta-love and while there was the possibility of a triangle, I'm glad that didn't really go anywhere.

The biggest jump for me were Darcy's friends. They were too convenient and too willing and fit in just a little too well and they made things just a little too easy, in places where I thought reality would be a little different. Teenagers can't disappear for two months without answering to some kind of authority. A society that appears to be at least somewhat more tightly regimented than the real world shouldn't be such an easy place for them to infiltrate so successfully. Conn had problems, so they should too.

There were some issues, but overall it was enjoyable, sweet, and I would probably read it again sometime. So, four stars.

I thought this was a well done paranormal novel. I liked that it was a new subject matter, not the normal werewolves and vampires. The Shades were well thought out and fleshed out. There was enough detail to the characters that it almost seemed like an older archetype rather than a newly imagined one. I loved that I hadn't read about them before and yet it almost felt like I had since there was so much information perfectly relayed and developed from the author's mind that they seemed real.

I liked Darcy as a character, although sometimes I felt that she wasn't sure if she was the shy-don't-notice-me-girl or the badass-don't-talk-to-me-girl. But one thing that she wasn't (consistently) was stupid. When she felt like she was in danger, she didn't let her possible feelings for anyone get in the way, she reacted and tried to get out of there. I liked that she was loyal, to her friends and to herself/her humanity. She made mistakes and may not have been great on giving/keeping her trust from the right people but her decisions were based on the greater good (which may seem corny, yes). And that is something that her character radiated from the first introduction.

Conn was a good romantic interest. Although you are not really sure where he stands at times, just like Darcy, there is this sense of humanity that drives him and you just hope that his head and actions can catch up to that when placed in the wrong situation. His wavering when it came to his loyalties, was honest and understandable given his past, not an inability to commit.

My biggest issue was that I felt that there should have been more exploration and description of the alternate Chicago and how/why the Great Chicago Fire not happening altered things. I know that if I wound up in some alternate universe, I would want to pay attention to details that are different. I wouldn't only go out at pre-scheduled times. I thought that a perfect point to focus on some of the reasons behind the differences would have been at the art gallery. Sometimes, there are little signs that give some detail about the pieces of artwork, maybe just one bit that touched on a reason for a slight difference between our world and this one. We only got glimpses of the alternate Chicago, the parts that were in detail were few and far between.

I know some people were bothered by the cliche of the new boy coming to school and changing the girl's life, I ignored that for the sake of the story. The end was also a little on the disappointing side. It seemed just too far fetched to me.

Spoiler

I felt that it was a little too coincidental that her friends managed to find the rifts between universes, find work, and a flat to stay in while keeping surveillance on the rift to wait for Darcy to come back.

I felt that her friends were a little too drawn up, some were too over-the-top while others were too cliche. The one secondary character that I did love, I cannot remember her name but she was the old lady who took care of the collections that the Shades took from the humans.