The Shadow of the Wind was a book I had literally never heard of until I got given it as a gift for my birthday. So I started the book with a vague interest that it would be something I could like but then put it down quite soon into the book and didn't read it for a while. Then I picked the book up again and have since experienced a real emotional roller-coaster.

One of my favourite elements about the book was the setting. The book takes place in Barcelona in the 1940s/50s, whilst Spain is recovering from the aftermath of the Civil War. This is an area of history I actually have very limited knowledge about and it made me want to learn so much more about this period. Zafon did a fantastic job of making me connect and understand this deeply divided and traumatised city. He brought to life the conflict that still existed in Barcelona and the persecution that took place. Although he didn't construct great visual descriptions of Barcelona, my own experience of going to Barcelona helped me to imagine the streets and the feel. It was a city I fell in love with when I visited and I was entirely drawn back there when I immersed myself in the pages of The Shadow in the Wind. Barcelona is such a beautiful, and rather magical city as well as having this dark, edgy and rather gothic feel to it. This sharp contrast came across really well in the novel and constantly kept you on the edge of your seat.

The element that I know a lot of people felt disappointed in were the characters, especially the female character. I felt that his characters really reflected this historical mood and angst in society. I wasn't disappointed at all in the female characters because this wasn't really a story about those women, and in the 1940s and 1950s they wouldn't have been viewed in the same way as today. This was a story told through Daniel and about Daniel. It was definitely an authentic reflection of how he constructed his relationships and the areas he left void in his relationships, especially with the female characters in this book. It showed of a boy disconnected from the female gender, from his mother and with a real difficult romance experience (which for plot reasons I won't go into, but his problematic romance had excellent parallels in the book). Daniel was a character that was drawing away from the world and Zafon really captured this lost boy. It was cleverly crafted and I think it needs to be recognised that not every book needs to have strong, visible female characters, like not every book about strong female women needs to have strong men. We can still be interested and inspired to look through another's viewpoint including those of a man.

I did really struggle in my mind to rate this book. There were elements where I hated it, it was painful and made me cry. There were moments where I felt joy and then terror. This is why I came to the decision that this book had many ups and downs, but overall it was a very good book because of how it made me feel and think. I would not say I necessarily enjoyed this book entirely, but I really experienced this book. It's one that maybe someday I would read again and fully recommend.