Though the film The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones was a bit of a box-office flop, the book it was adapted from is still one of the most popular among young adult readers. The City of Bones by Cassandra Clare is a New York Times bestselling novel that is still popular after six years. 

Set in New York, the novel tells the story of, Clary Fray an average girl who lives with her single mother. One night while she’s at a nightclub with her best friend Simon, she witnesses three teenagers about her own age murder another boy. What’s weirder is that no one else in the club sees it happen.

Constantly thinking about the event, she is confronted by Jace, one of the teenagers she saw at the nightclub. As Jace explains that he is a Shadowhunter, and that the boy they killed was a demon, Clary gets a strange call from her mother. When Clary arrives home, her mother is missing.

Jace takes Clary back to where he and the other demon hunters live. He, along with the other hunters who live there, Alex and Isabelle, tell her what the world is really like. Demons, vampires, wizards, and fairies are all real. Normal people, or “mundanes,” simply can’t see them.

After a while, Clary learns that her mother is also a Shadowhunter, but had kept her daughter away from that life as much as she could. She even erased certain memories of her own and shielded her eyes with magic to prevent herself from being able to see the magic and monsters around her.

In the first book, readers follow Clary as she tries to recover her lost memories as well as find her missing mother, all while dealing with a confusing love triangle involving Simon and Alec.

Anyone who is a fan of fantasy and adventure novels will most assuredly love these books. Along with series’ like Hunger Games and Divergent, it’s popular among readers who love teenage stories with a twist.

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