Book #31 week #27, City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1) by Cassandra Clare

So I finish my 31st book of the year during the week of my 31st birthday! Pretty neat coincidence I think. Well technically I did read two books this week but I didn't count the other towards my goal since it was a re-read of The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I picked up the paperback and was dying to read the bonus chapter. By the way there is a movie version of The Host in post-production and due out next year. I was looking at the IMDB page and it seems like a lot of characters are absent from the cast list, this makes me nervous.

Anyway quite a few people recommended The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare to me so I picked up book one City of Bones at the library. This series is a Young Adult series with five books out now and a sixth to be released in 2014! Wow what a wait ; )

Clary (Clarissa) is an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl living with her mom in New York. At least she was ordinary until one night, when out at an all ages club with her best friend Simon, she witnesses something strange. Two boys and a girl murder another boy who's body mysteriously disappears after being killed. It turns out this group is invisible to everyone except for Clary. Without a body and the killers being invisible Clary doesn't know what to do so she heads home. Once home her mom and her mom's friend Luke walk in with a bunch of boxes. Her mom explains that they will be taking a sudden vacation for the summer. This news angers Clary and in a typical teenage fashion she takes off.

The next night Clary and Simon go out to support a friend at a bad poetry reading. Clary runs into Jace (the head of the killers from the club) and while talking to him gets a frantic phone call from her mom which ends suddenly after her mom warns Clary not to return home. But of course she does! And she encounters a demon in her apartment and her mother is missing. Clary's once normal world is suddenly turned upside down while she tries to find her mother, learn who to trust and deal with teenage love.

All in all for a YA book I really liked City of Bones. Well except for the bombshell near the end! But we'll see how that plays out. I like the characters Jace is cocky and full of himself, Clary is fiesty without being bitchy and there is finally a main character who is gay. But seriously how can you go wrong with werewolves, vampires, faeries and demons?

Quotes: I've got two, this book is filled with good quotes!

“Don't order any of the faerie food," said Jace, looking at her over the top of his menu. "It tends to make humans a little crazy. One minute you're munching a faerie plum, the next minute you're running naked down Madison Avenue with antlers on your head. Not," he added hastily, "that this has ever happened to me.” 

“Don't stop there. I suppose there are also, what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?"
"Of course there are. Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the voudun priests are."
"What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?"
"Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies.”