Review: Shadow of the Wind

Review: The Shadow of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The first book I read in 2014 was The Shadow of the Wind, and I loved it so much that I wanted it to be the last book I read this year as well. So as I re-read it, I remembered exactly why I fell in love with it, all the things I wanted to say about it and I KNEW that this book was going to be my first reviewed book on this blog. Also NO SPOILERS.

The Shadow of the Wind is set in 1945, Barcelona, right after WWII, and it’s about a young man called Daniel Sempere, whose father takes him to this huge secret library called Cemetery of Forgotten Books so he can pick a book to “adopt it”. Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax and becomes fascinated, partly because of his love for the story, but also because he soon discovers that someone is buying every book Carax ever wrote only to destroy it.
The Shadow of the Wind reminds me of On The Jellicoe Road. Both books start off with a character from the present trying to discover something about people from the past, and both books entwine those two stories —present and past— slowly (and in both books the stories from the past are QUITE HEARTBREAKING). In this case, Daniel is trying to find out what happened to Carax. Is he dead? Why is there someone destroying his books? And as you get deeper into this mystery, Carax’s life gets bigger and bigger to the point where it becomes more about Carax than about Daniel, because we get to know the most important aspects of his life, his tragic love affair (the feelings, guys, THE FEELINGS) his family, and it gives us this nostalgic feeling of missing people you never had the chance to meet. It’s also very dramatic and has some creepy, almost eerie parts that made me stop reading for awhile because I was pretty scared.

What I also LOVE about this novel is the setting. It’s 1940s Barcelona, so that explains it. Carlos Ruiz Zafón has this amazing ability to describe the city so beautifully, and it’s very different and fitting, like it complements the story and makes Barcelona not just a place, but also a character.

The pace is slow at first, then it gets INTENSE SO FAST. I didn’t even care about nothing happening in the majority of the novel because you’re getting to know SO MUCH about the characters that it’s not boring. It just makes you want to read more and more and when the action starts, your mind is blown. The dialogue, the characters, how everything unfolds, it’s beautiful and very unique, but as I said earlier, it can be a bit dramatic.

THERE IS a sequel and other books about the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, but this can be easily read as a stand-alone ( WHY WOULD YOU WANT THAT THOUGH?).

Final rating: 4.75 stars.

Now please forgive me for any mistakes because English is not my first language and if you read the book let me know! Thank you for reading!