City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

"Fifteen-year-old Clary Fray is an ordinary teenager, who likes hanging out in Brooklyn with her friends. But everything changes the night she witnesses a murder, committed by a group of teens armed with medieval weaponry. The murderous group are Shadowhunters, secret warriors dedicated to driving demons out of this dimension and back into their own. Drawn inexorably into a terrifying world, Clary slowly begins to learn the truth about her family - and the battle for the fate of the world."

City of Bones is the first book in the Mortal Instruments series. It follows Clary, a 15 year old who believes herself to be just an regular teen as she discovers the world of the Shadowhunters and learns she is anything but ordinary.

After witnessing an attack by three other teens claiming to be Shadowhunters, and realising even her best friend Simon, couldn't see them, things get even stranger for Clary. Her mom is attacked and kidnapped, but Clary has no idea why or who by. But the Shadowhunters seem to have some idea and she finds she has to rely on these strangers, who kill demons and live in a very different world to the one Clary's always known, to help her.

Soon she discovers that not only are there demons in the world, and Shadowhunters to kill them, but vampires, werewolves and various other creatures she believed to be myth, are real and all around her. Not only that, but her mom knew already and never told her. As Clary finds herself deeper and deeper in to this other world, she unravels more hidden secrets and learns a whole lot more about the real her than she'd ever imagined.

I liked this book, a lot more than I'd originally thought I would. But it's far from flawless. The writing is a little on the simple side, the plotting loose and the characters are a little flat, more obviously in some places than others. But I still found it a fairly gripping read. It's not un-put-down-able, but it held my interest well enough.

The world created is an imaginative one, with a lot to it and although not spectacularly written, it moves along at a good pace and the writing is easy to cruise along with. I found it a pretty fun read with some a couple decent twists along the way. A lot of it is given enough hints along the way that there aren't major shocks, but it wasn't enough to ruin it all.

A good, fun read if you don't mind the lighter writing and for me, I'm really looking forward to getting and reading the next two books soon. 8/10