Laini Taylor made a lot of little decisions when she wrote up this story, and a lot of people loved the result. And not all those people were teenage girls either. 
 Then I showed up - and a few others before me. Since my thoughts mirror many of the two and three star reviews already out there, I hope to be brief but, er, quirky. 
 I loved the beginning, not five star loved, but four star for sure. Karou, a mysterious art student in Prague, mysterious even to herself for reasons I may not get into, was intriguing and fun. She had a foolish ex-boyfriend who refused to hit the road, but that did not reflect on her badly because she would not budge. Things story-wise were really working: there was magic and angels and demons, but the demons employed Karou in a part-time job and treated her as family because they'd raised her. I had lots of questions and not knowing the answers was tantalizing. 
 The story did not fall apart, but I lost interest as it unraveled. Taylor's creation is complex, difficult to organize - I don't want to give too much away, but key bits in the middle/end were understood with the details left to show, which made those parts somewhat boring when they came. A lot of the last 100 pages or so was flashback, preordained and ultimately moot as far as I was concerned: no longer tantalizing. That may not have spoiled it for some, I guess because of the romance, but I'm at a loss to explain why or how. My wife and I met and married within less than a year. I'm all for love and love at first sight, though love at first sight is called lust if it does not have legs. This is YA so it did not surprise me. What bored me was the unquestioned devotion to hard bodies, the emphasis on form. That's honest, that's real world, but the description left it unquestioned, unexamined, un-undermined. Worse, we were expected to view their love as something more than physical attraction. Maybe I would have, except nothing compelled it. 
 Many of Taylor's decisions did hit home. Our world is mixed with another world, that of the angels and demons, but it's not what we think. A lot is not what we think, including Karou, the demon Brimstone, and the angel, Akiva. They're all doomed, but the story's continued...