A review by historyofjess
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I'm not always as big a fan of Bardugo as others, but one thing she always excels at is creating really engaging, morally gray characters and there are a whole bunch of them in this book that I loved getting to know.

There were aspects of the competition at the center of this book that I was often just powering through, because it felt a little overly familiar and uninteresting. But the lovers at the center of this story were really fun and complicated and I had a blast with them. But I also really enjoyed the chapters that focused on some of the supporting characters. Seriously...Bardugo is just great at making me fall in love with characters that I wouldn't normally expect to be interested in.

I was a little thrown that I had heard this book described as a "vampire novel" because it's definitely not and so I kept expecting one of the characters to be revealed as a vampire for the first half of the book until I just relaxed and stopped trying to out guess things. :P