I have a lot of mixed feelings about City of Bones. I originally tried reading this a couple of years ago and just absolutely despised it. However, there are so many people who absolutely love this series that I wanted to give it another shot and see if it really and truly was worth the hype. This time around, I found that I did like City of Bones quite a bit more than I did the first time. Now... that doesn't mean that I thought it was particularly great either. It was just better than I was expecting it to be. 
 Basically, City of Bones is one of the most formulaic YA paranormal adventures I've ever seen. However, it's a particularly well written one. Cassandra Clare does have talent as a writer even if the material is quite basic. It makes use of pretty much all the common cliche's out there... 
 1.	An average girl becomes the "chosen one." 
 -	Clary starts off the story thinking she's just a normal girl and then comes to learn that she's a Shadowhunter and can see the magical world and she can use runes she's never seen before, and blah blah, special snowflake, blah. 
 2.	A girl who doesn't consider herself beautiful and yet has two hot guys drooling over her. 
 -	Clary, girl, come on! This is stupid. 
 3.	Obligatory love triangle. 
 -	Between the nice guy best friend Simon and the brooding bad boy Jace. I mean... you could switch out the names of the two guys and find the same thing in almost every YA romance. 
 4.	The OTP is torn apart for stupid reasons. 
 -	Allegedly Jace and Clary are siblings. I mean... obviously this can't be true since they're love interests for the rest of the series. I doubt Cassandra Clare would write 6 books about a brother and sister trying to fuck each other. 
 Actually the whole incest angle is the thing that makes me not completely enamored with the series. Just... why? This has to be one of the dumbest reasons to break up an OTP. Do I like Clary and Jace as a couple? Yes! So am I still supposed to root for them to be a couple when they're currently under the impression that they're siblings? No... ew! Is it just me or could that whole brother/sister thing be cleared up by a simple DNA test? I know they have like special blood and regular doctors can't be allowed to play with it or whatever. But, nowadays you just need to get a cheek swab to test for a familial bond. No blood required. Are there no Shadowhunter doctors or scientists who can handle doing a DNA test? This seems like a super easy thing to get a definitive answer to. This whole incest angle is going to be endlessly annoying to me. 
 Regardless of the story being pretty basic, it was still well written. This is the exact same thing as in the case of Twilight where the story in particular isn't really all that original but the writing is exceptional so it makes the whole story a little bit better. Overall, I'm happy that I gave this one another shot. At the very least it ended my hated of The Mortal Instruments series and intrigued me enough to continue on.