I went into reading this book with absolutely no knowledge of what I was about to read. I had been struggling to find something new to read and needed something different. A Goodreads friend threw this suggestion at me out of left field, so I promptly brought it and started. Gods you got to love the kindle. 
 Imagine my surprise that within 20 minutes I was completely and utterly absorbed into a story of Barcelona in the 1930' and 40's. Within an hour I had lost all sense of time and was completely immersed in this fascinating story of books, mystery and love. Er, mystery and love? me? hmmm, can't find a tag for that one in my list. 
 Within two hours I had recommended it to three friends, they all said "well yeah, duh, its a great book, can't believe you havent read it yet". Within three hours I brought a copy for my mum, then went and brought a copy for my mother in law. What!? 
 It's great when a book takes you completely surprise, you have no expectations, you just start reading and you fall head long into the story. So what makes this book great? There a some authors out there who don't write a novel, they tell a story, this is one of those types of books. Set in Spain in the miserable 30's and 40's it tells the story of a young boy whose father owns a book shop. His love of books leads him to finding a book written by an author few people know about. trying to learn more about this author leads our young protagonist on a journey of love and pain. With the horrors of the Spanish civil war, suspicion, torture, secret police and mystical ghosts, this story has it all. But the story itself is not the thing that has you deep into this book, it is the telling of the story, you hang of every word, you visualise the characters and streets and the houses and..... just everything. It's like sitting in your chair whilst your dad reads to you again, telling you a story, whilst you sit with wide eyes, listening, excited, sad, horrified....hating the fact that you realise that its now 1am and you really really need to go to bed. Not that my dad let me stay up till one in the morning when he read stories. 
 I could go on and tell you about the plot, but I am not, just go read the book, my meagre attempts at describing the book will not really explain how lost I became in this story. This is a translated story, from Spanish to English, (I assume), I wish I understood Spanish, because this book is beautiful in English, I can't imagine what it was like in its native language. 
 Damian, thanks for the recommendation dude! You could not have picked a better book for the funk I was in last week, awesome!