Honestly, I didn't think Leigh Bardugo could top the fabulous Shadow and Bone trilogy, but she literally knocked it out of the park with Six of Crows!
I was debating whether to give it the full-blown 5 stars rating or go for a 4.5 stars rating, but in the end I've decided that it very much deserves the full 5 stars, and I'll tell you why.

Spoilers, obviously, this is an older-ish series so don't blame me if I spoil anything for you.

First of all, I'd like to talk about why I wanted to remove 0.5 from it.
Six of Crows absolutely should NOT have been a YA, like It's ridiculously obvious to me that this should've been a "New Adult" or whatever It's called.
The setting is grim, dark, brutal and entirely makes you feel like you're reading an Adult book. The characters are very intense and aggressive, especially our main man Kaz Brekker (The eyes removing scene was absolutely disgusting and I LOVED it), Inej and Nina both have been working in brothels and the talk of prostitution is there, and Nina was basically naked by the time the book ended.
Slavery, basically, which was kind of shocking for me to see in a YA book.
And finally, don't get me started on the age of these characters... It makes zero sense for these characters to be 16-17, like no sense at all, and in order to make myself enjoy this book I had to think of them as if they were in their mid-twenties (which they should have been from the beginning).

Okay then, now let's talk about the good stuff!
The characters were all hella interesting and dark, and the banter was everything I could ever want in a book so that made me extra happy.
The backstories were absolutely brutal and dark, especially Kaz's, like it made my heart break for him and gave me a deeper understanding as for why he wears those gloves and doesn't like it when people are touching him.

The relationships, that weren't even the main focus of the story, were beautifully developed without it feeling overwhelming or unnecessary to the plot. I especially enjoyed how slowly Kaz and Inej's feelings and relationship blossomed, thus revealing the human side of the otherwise Demjin side of Kaz.
Nina and Matthias twisted and crazy complicated relationship was one of the highlights from this book, Matthias working on solving his emotions in regards to Nina whilst also fighting with his extremely prejudiced way of thinking when it comes to Grisha was really well-written and something that I haven't seen a lot of in YA books.
There were two pages that absolutely got to me in the last couple of chapters of this book, pages 434 and 436, Kaz/Inej and Matthias/Nina respectively, that were absolutely GROEGOUSLY written and made feel stuff abut these potential couples.
I liked the couple of hints that could blossom into a love story between Jesper and the adorable Wylan! We need more representation in YA Fantasy books, and that has me looking forward to seeing how It'll happen in Crooked Kingdom.

The way this differs from Shadow and Bone was very clear to me, Leigh Bardugo's writing was very sophisticated and beautiful here, meanwhile it was more flat and direct in S&B, which is fine because you can't expect an author in 2012 to knock it out of the park in her first book, writers evolve and their writing becomes more complex and sophisticated over time.
Also I absolutely loved the multiple POVs, which is something that was missing from S&B even though in that one we had a Chosen One trope so it wouldn't have made sense to have multiple POVs.

The Heist gave me a shit load of anxiety, literally felt as if I were watching a heist movie and their asses were about to be caught every single time.
Kaz Brekker is a planning genius, like that's something that I absolutely loved about his character, how he plans for everything and has multiple fail-safes because he knows unexpected shit's gonna go down sometime or another.

It shocked me how extremely brutal and prejudiced the Fjerdans were, and idk if that's a metaphor for something (white supremacists) or if it was simply a way to get us to hate their asses but it worked. Like it was truly sad how the Grisha are being treated, and King Nikolai apparently isn't doing shit about it, since nothing of the sort was mentioned in here.

The twist at the end didn't really shock me, mainly because I've seen it coming from a mile away, and the ending kind of fell flat for me but it wasn't a big deal since it's basically setting up the sequel.
What surprised me was the fact that Kaz didn't actually kill Pekka Rollins, but instead has saved him and is now using him as his own personal bank, that shit surprised me.

I'm now looking forward to read Crooked Kingdom this month, and for the Netflix show in April!