Jan *The Shadow of the Wind *Carlos Ruiz Zafon

From the back cover, “Barcelona, 1945 - Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, and a boy named Daniel awakes one day to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a book that will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact he may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Before Daniel knows it, his innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love.

“An uncannily absorbing historical mystery, a heart-piercing romance, and a moving homage to the mystical power of books, The Shadow of the Wind is a triumph of the storyteller’s art.”

Amen! I really liked the way this book started and ended and most of the parts in between. I loved that Daniel’s life paralleled Julian’s and that in the end …. Oops -- don’t want to give away the ending. You gotta read this if you’re a book lover. And even if you’re not.