Quick note: There is a shorter review of this book in my 2017 post Book Recommendations.

When you tell people you like to read, one of the first questions you always get is “what’s your favourite book then?”. I’ve been asked this question a lot and I’ve always said that there are books I love, but that I don’t have a true favourite because how could I pick from all the wonderful books I’ve read?

But I’m currently rereading one of the books I love so much, and I have to admit that I do, in fact, have a favourite book, and it’s the book I’m reading – The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. If you’ve heard me talk about this book, you’ll know just how much I love it and how much it means to me. If you haven’t heard me talk about this book, you’re about to find out just how much I love it and how much it means to me.

I first found out about The Shadow Of The Wind in a Spanish lesson, which sounds strange, but it is a book written by a Spanish author and originally published in Spanish. My friend Chloe and I were doing work on Spanish literature and we found a book that was about a cemetery of forgotten books. We were immediately enraptured with this concept and I decided I had to read it. Luckily, when I got home, I found that my parents were years ahead of me and already had a copy, which I then decided to read as soon as possible.

One of the main reasons this book means a lot to me is the context of my life at the first time I read it. I had just started being bullied at school and my anxiety was beginning to become a problem (if you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll know this is still an ongoing battle for me). One of my most vivid memories of reading this book is that I first read it on my holiday with my family that year, 2016, in the caravan we were staying in. I wanted so badly to just escape my life and who I was, and The Shadow Of The Wind did just that.

*This part of the review includes some plot points but aims to be as spoiler free as possible* The story is set in Barcelona and follows Daniel Sempere, a young man who is the son of a bookshop owner. His father takes him to a secret place called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, in which he finds a book called ‘The Shadow Of The Wind’ (yep, same name as the actual book, a little confusing at first) by Julian Carax. Daniel falls in love with the book and wishes to find more written by Carax, but can’t find any other of his books in existence. It turns out that a man named Lain Coubert, who has no face due to being burned, has been looking for Carax’s books and burning them. Despite the danger of Coubert, Daniel dives deeper into Carax’s past and the mystery of what happened to him and how he seemed to disappear, whilst also making discoveries in his own life. The book is full of mystery, love and revenge.

The plot and concept of the book is remarkable, and as a writer myself, I admire the work that Zafon had to put in to make sure that everything connected and worked out to the solution in the end. The mystery of Julian Carax and his novels kept me guessing and made me question the characters and their actions, judging each one on how they might affect the mystery. However, this is also one of the drawbacks of the book as well as the advantages. For me, at least, a single read wasn’t enough to fully follow and understand what is happening and the timeline of the events, because it’s all so complex and intertwined. But I definitely couldn’t complain about this as each time I’ve read the book, I’ve found tiny details I perhaps glossed over before, and enjoyed the writing even more. Whilst some may argue that Zafon’s writing is too flowery in points, I find it beautiful. Though very descriptive and stylistic, the writing is so well done and most sentences sound like poetry on their own; there are some incredible quotes that I have awe for each time I read them. The characters are also very well developed and not at all flat, and their relationships with each other are explored well throughout the novel.

The Shadow Of The Wind is genuinely just an incredible book that I would recommend to anyone who likes reading. Even if it’s not your usual genre, I recommend trying it because I think there’s so many different aspects to it that it can appeal to people with different tastes. It will continue to be my favourite book for a long time because I truly doubt I could find another book that impacts me more.

The Shadow Of The Wind is part of a series of books called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, which contains four books that can be read as a series or as standalone books. The books in the series are: The Shadow Of The Wind (2001); The Angel’s Game (2008); The Prisoner Of Heaven (2011); and The Labyrinth Of The Spirits (2016).