Shadow and Bone

A very lacklustre YA Fantasy book.
I'm not sure why I've seen so many people reading it lately as it has nothing special going for it, other than a to-be-released netflix show.
The main character is very typical. She thinks she is ugly, is very dismal, etc. Alina is meant to be relatable to young girls aged 12-17. The type of main character you'd see in a self-insert fanfiction. She obsesses over the darkling for about half the book, and it gets annoying fast. After she is kissed by the darkling, she spends about the rest of the chapter thinking about telling people about it.
She has two love interests, the aforementioned “Darkling” and her childhood friend “Mal”. At first, when Alina sees some other girl look at Mal, she starts obsessing over how she used to have a crush on him and that it was no big deal. Which we can infer ‘used to' is not accurate. But then her powers get discovered, and she meets the Darkling. Keep in mind he is 100+ years older than her. Eventually, the Darkling kisses her for the first time, and as I said before, she totally freaks out. It even gets to the point where he's supposed to go up her her room after this insignificant winter ball that only ever truly existed to further develop her and the darkling's relationship. At the end of the book, however she is with Mal. Enough flip-flopping to be a mock love triangle.
The other characters are flimsy as well. The side characters only seem to exist mostly as filler to make the book longer, which is fine by me, as they are all unlikeable anyways.
There's no point disecting the Russian influences of this point, as other reviews have done so in a better way than I can.

This concludes my review. If you like the book, I mean no disrespect.