Book Review- Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Late last night, I finished reading Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor for an Around the World ARC Tour.

From Goodreads:

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?
 
I have heard/read so many rave reviews about this book.  And I was sooo excited to read it.  So why do I always find myself in the minority with books that are raved about??  Sigh.  I'm not saying this book was bad.  Not at all.  But I didn't fall in love with it like I thought I would.  It was just too...dark for me, I guess.
 
The book is set in such a different world.  Even in the world that is human, it was so foreign, in every sense.  It just seemed slow to me.  It took me a while to read it.  And I never really could get into Karou.  I never got close to her and felt like I really cared about her.
 
The premise of the story was a good idea.  A unique one.  The world Karou lived in sure was weird.  Maybe it was just too weird for me.  I did like the ending though.  The last 100 pages or so seemed to really fly by.  I think I was more interested in that part of the story than Karous.  Not really sure why. This book will have a sequel and I think I'll need to read the summary of that book to see if I'll pick it up.
 
I gave this book a rating of 3.5/5.
 
This book fulfills items in the following challenges:
2011 100+ Reading Challenge: 98
2011 ARC Reading Challenge: 78
2011 Young Adult Reading Challenge: 78
 
*FTC Disclosure: I was given this book for free for an honest review as part of the Around the World Tours.