An incredible end to one of my favourite series of books ever. I'm honestly gutted to have finished this book series. 800 pages of brilliant storytelling and I can't wait to reread the whole thing. The pacing was perfect and I didn't feel bored at any point. It really wraps up every characters plots completely and thats a very satisfying (but rare!!) way to end a series of books.

The only reason I took away a star is that some of zafon's female characters feel a bit 2D. All the women are femme fatales and largely unrealistic. The other reason is the brief marital rape scene. It comes fairly near the end and is only a few paragraphs long and is stopped before its started but it still took me by surprise and made me feel quite uncomfortable. Whilst i understand that COFB is quite grim as a whole, I'm of the opinion that detailed sexual assault scenes really aren't at all needed and this one was so random and upsetting that I feel it was completely unnecessary to the point where it made a 5 star book less than that.