Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Summary- Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?

Thankful for... Mammoth

   

 At first the contest had me confused. Thankful? There wasn't a particular book that immediately came to mind. Nothing had an impact earth-shattering enough for me to remember instantly. And, just sayin', I'm not a fan of anything Narnia although Turkish Delights sound heavenly. The Narnia book series has always sounded like it would be better read aloud to a gaggle of poor stuffed geese by an aloof, elderly English man. Not that I discriminate against aloof, elderly English men who pass lonely, lonely days reading aloud to a gaggle of stuffed geese. Much. The movie was surprisingly good, but I ending up falling asleep during the hour-long fight scene.

      I had to dig through my bookshelf to find a book I had almost but not quite forgotten about. Mammoth by John Varley was my Narnia. It was a just-because present from my college broke sister. I was ten, and I knew Mammoth was probably going to be a  face-palmer. The tip-offs?

1. The only books my sister ever reads are Serious Books. One bored weekend in her apartment, I found myself learning all about the joys of feminism in a concise work of literature topping a thousand pages. My sister had read over and highlighted the most important bits. Fun stuff.
2. The book in question was purchased new for a dollar.
3. I was ten. Mammoth was meant to be read by adults.

     Oh, yeah. Ten-year-old me had major skills of deductive reasoning. But my skills had failed me. Mammoth was good. While I was right about some scenes being too old for me (what did Matt and Susan mean when they said making love? Why did they lay down together? So. Many. Questions.), the parts that made sense opened my mind up to the possibilities of the good in bigger, more complex books. Mammoth helped me to branch out and find worth while middle-grade books leading me to become my obviously awesome bibliophile self. : D