Review - City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

The Mortal Instruments #1
Genre: young adult / fantasy
Pages: 485
Rating: 3/5 stars
Goodreads

Summary
When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing―not even a smear of blood―to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know...  

My thoughts
Before writing this review I read this book for the second time. While I loved it the first time, this time I was a little disappointed because in my memory it was a better book.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. Somehow this book drew me in from the start and I just wanted to keep reading but in a lot of ways it felt very flawed. The story, although compelling, didn't feel very original. It felt a bit like a mash up of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Twilight. 
I thought the main character Clary was 'okay'. She did have a personality, but I would have loved to see her fleshed out more. She could also really annoy me when she would do something stupid again. I realize she was new to the whole demons & demon fighters world, but I would have thought if anything it would have made her cautious. Instead she threw herself in any dangerous situation to 'help'. Ofcourse it's good to help when something bad happens, but there wasn't really anything she could do because she hadn't had the same training as the shadowhunters. So most of the time Clary was just hanging around and getting herself in trouble. Her 'friendship' with Simon was a little bit sad. Clearly they had some same interests, but Clary was constantly bossing him around and yelling at him and not seeing how much he tried to please her.
Jace was also a character that could have been fleshed out more, because after reading the whole book I only know a little bit about his family and that he plays the piano. He didn't drive me as crazy as Clary did though. I actually thought his arrogance and his sarcasm made the book a whole lot funnier.
It was definitely not the best book ever written, but still enjoyable so I'm going to read the sequel as welll.