The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

5/5 Stars I may have even given it 6/5! (Just finished reading it July 1st.)

B&N:
Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

My Review:

This book was amazing. I didn't think I would enjoy this book as much as I did. (Thank you book club for "making" me read it!) The author did a phenomenal job of keeping the reader guessing throughout the entire story. You would get a piece of the puzzle that really made you think, and then the story would move on giving you more information and other smaller pieces of the puzzle. Then the author would reveal what the first piece of the puzzle really meant causing you to piece the entire thing together a little bit more. I must say some of the information revealed were shocking (even if I started to guess a little of what was going on.)
The plot was perfect. There were basically two stories going on at once, but they were somehow connected. If you enjoy family drama, history, Spain, books, and mystery (I am not a mystery reading which is why I was shocked at how much I loved this book!) this is definitely a book you will want to add to your "to-read" list.