Oh My God ! 
 Okay, so I will just say; probably don't completely trust this rating. This may be personal in some places, but not too much so. 
 There was instalove, the curse ! I still loved this book. I loved this book! 
 It could just be the yellowness of it ; o god was it yellow! The cover, the sides of the pages, both yellow, yellow, yellow. This summer I just know I'll be into colour ... my art hangover is over, and I'll be way more into art. Right now I'm in love with blue, and I've been wearing this big blue jumper for over a week, except when it has been put in the washing machine. I want to buy this book, but I want a yellow copy. 
 I personally really enjoyed the prose. It took me a second to realise that she and he weren't actually puking all over the table, his mother didn't actually stab his dad at the dinner table. But I got into it pretty fast, and then loved it. Some of it made me actually laugh, and some made me feel sad, but not quite cry ; this had some good depiction of grief and the guilt that can come after the death of a loved one, even if it is unfounded. This prose might be more purple than lavender itself, but I love it, I love it. I used to write like this, arty shit. Years ago I once even tried to write a story, a bit similar to this ; about twins (two girls), both arty, both odd and eccentric, also described in an odd way and with a myriad of issues. I gave up, but I might go back to it - or something like it - because now I see that it can be done and it is not awful, if this makes sense ... I am tired. 
 I liked most of the characters, too. I didn't like Jude or Noah particularly, at first, but I did warm to them more as the book went on. However, I was especially liking (and intrigued by) some of the other characters from the start : Guillermo, Oscar, Brian, Heather, the mother of Noah and Jude, and even their father. I especially loved Brian - with his rocks and his vulnerability and his hair and his general strangeness - and Oscar - I love to read about 'dangerous' boys, e.g. Ronan Lynch and Kavinsky from The Raven Cycle (mainly The Dream Thieves) - though I did find Oscar a bit odd as an English person ; I have never heard anyone say bloody hell or any of the other English slang he uses as much as he does, and it seems to me that his accent would more likely be one less 'intelligent' and Queen's English sounding (Jude's part about Pride and Prejudice was hilarious, and of course completely untrue. What the hell, do some Americans actually believe the same as Jude did?). However, overlooking that easily, I love books with characters that seem different from the norm, and all of these people did seem weirdly different to anybody I have met. I guess I should be glad of that, in some of these cases. 
 The plot, well. It was what it was, and it was good for it, if this makes sense. It's a young adult book about twins being alienated from each other, and it does this well. I absolutely loved the way that it was wrapped up neatly at the end, and slowly connected as we went through, in things that you may have been wondering if they had a point, in characters that you were not sure if they had a specific point as such. 
 I ! Loved ! the ! Description ! of ! the ! Art ! 
 I loved it a lot. I always am a big fan of art, reading about art - especially in novels - and one of the main reasons that Daughter of Smoke & Bone got 2 stars instead of 1 is because of the description of the art, if I am honest. I totally loved the description of the paintings and the sculptures. There's just something about that sort of stuff that I love that I can't put my finger on. 
 I just loved it. Probably not because it was Great Literature, but because it captured things that I love and did not overdo the things that I hate (the instalove was okay? it wasn't forced, what the hell). Very good. Will reread one day.