Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

Karou lives a double life.  She's an art student living in Prague, but she also runs errands for the chimaera Brimstone, who raised her from a baby.  Karou collects teeth for him, although she's never been told what Brimstone does with them.  Everything changes when hand prints begin appearing on the doorways that lead to Brimstone's world, and Karou meets a Akiva, a seraphim, the swore enemy of the chimaera.  Karou and Akiva should be enemies too, but for some reason, they can't bring themselves to hurt each other.

Love this.  Love.  This.  A fabulous, well written romantic fantasy.  Laini Taylor wrote Lips Touch: Three Times, which I very much enjoyed.  I just love how she describes otherworldly places.  Her magical worlds just seem more magical then others.  There was such richness to it, and the other world was explained.  I understood the history behind what was happening, I had a picture of why things were the way they were.  I really appreciate when an author takes the time to really think through the worlds they're creating, and make everything make sense.

Karou and Akiva are drawn toward each other.  Now, in a lot of romance storylines, this annoys me to no end.  BUT it totally worked in this case.  First of all, because there was actually a reason that the characters were drawn together, which was well explained, and also because both Karou and Akiva were interesting, well developed, flawed characters that I cared about.  I was reading as fast as I could so I could find out what happened to them.

Another aspect I enjoyed was that there were great supporting characters.  Karou has a friend from art school, Zuzana who I adored.  She and Karou had a real friendship, and she doesn't disappear when Karou is trying to figure out what's going on with Akiva.  Karou actually trusts and values her friendship with Zuzana enough that she tells her what's really going on, and Zuzana is there to help her.

I glad that this is going to be a series, and I'm looking forward to reading more.  Things ended on such a cliffhanger!  What's going to happen?!  When does the next one come out?!  I want to know!  Oh I hope somehow things have a happy ending, although I'm not sure how it could.

Daughter of Smoke & Bone comes out on September 27.