My Reaction in a Nutshell: 
 I'm feeling generous today by giving it two stars. 
 The Long Version: 
 Honestly, Shadow and Bone wasn't a book that was high on my TBR list. The Grisha trilogy really wasn't a series that was on my radar until Six of Crows came out. Six of Crows is about thieves. I love reading books about people stealing shit. However, that book is set in the same world as the Grisha series. So in order to get some background info on the world, I decided to read Shadow and Bone. 
 The writing in Shadow and Bone is choppy. The world building isn't that great. And I felt like I needed a glossary to figure out the difference between various types of Grisha. Plus there is an annoying amount of cattiness in this book. Alina doesn't like Zoya just because she's pretty, a good fighter, and she had some mild interest in Mal. In such a short book, a lot of it contained women-on-women hate and jealousy. 
 Honestly, I probably would've enjoyed this book more if I hadn't just finished the amazing Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. His world building, character development, and glossaries in the back of the book are AMAZING. This, unfortunately, made all of Shadow and Bone's flaws more apparent. 
 The plot felt rushed and the character relationships insincere. Plus there was a lack of character development as a whole. The book felt like it needed to be longer in order to truly develop the plot, characters, and world building appropriately. Overall, Shadow and Bone had a decent-ish ending, but with a rush plot, choppy writing, and mediocre character development, I couldn't justify giving this book more than two stars (and even that is being generous). 
 A huge part of me doesn't want to continue the series, but I know a lot of people love the Grisha series. I might give the second book a try. I'm hoping that her series gets better later on, but I don't have high hopes. 
 ***TRIGGER WARNINGS: implied R, forced kissing, mind control, mentions of potential suicide, incarceration, slavery, war, death, murder