Chapter 11 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: apparently I just wanted to reference some awesome 90s movies today.

Jace leaned forward and banged his hand against the partition separating them from the cab driver. “Turn left! Left! I said to take Broadway, you brain-dead moron!”

And this is how the 11th chapter of this wondrous book opens up—our romantic hero abusing a service worker—sooooo charming, right ladies? I’m sure we’re all just falling over ourselves to find someone like him.

Basically, Jace wants breakfast and he wants it now. I don’t get this—we literally left off with Clary finding out someone really fucking powerful left a block in her brain and it’s up to her to figure it out so she can find her mother, and yet here we are listening to Jace invite the whole freaking gang out for breakfast because... why? Does this scene need to happen?

Chapter 10 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: I'm really sick right now so cut me some slack.

First, I’d like to apologise for being such a level 10 butt and not updating for two whole weeks, because apparently I got super busy and couldn’t deal with it. So, yeah, my bad!

I last left this book on an intolerable cliffhanger, obviously, since I didn’t think about this story the whole two weeks, which is exactly what you want as a writer. We found out that Valentine (Voldy) was married to Fairy’s mom, which... I guess is something I didn’t see coming. But the thing is, she never dropped any hints that this was a possibility to the reader the whole time, so it’s not really a big reveal if she just held all the cards under the table and was like ‘nothing to see here! Move along!’ until she decided she was ready. Part of the fun of reading is guessing what’s behind the cards.

Hodge raised his hands wearily. “Children—”
“I’m not a child.” Clary spun away from the desk.

Ah, the wonderful “I’m not a little girl anymore omg!!!11!!” line, slotted in to make all the teenagers reading this novel feel older. I get it, I definitely felt like an adult at 15, but man is it weird to read this as an actual adult, because... yes you are, Fairy.

Chapter 9 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: I abuse italics way more than I should in this recap.

We’re back for another episode of ‘How Many Ways Can Cassandra Clare Use Weird and Totally Not Accurate Equivalent Similes to Describe Things That Don’t Need Describing’! Hope you’re all excited!

We start off with some lovely sentence confusion that probably could’ve been cleared up with some editing:

Clary stepped forward to touch Jace’s arm, say something, anything—what did you say to someone who’d just seen his father’s killers? Her hesitation turned out not to matter; Jace shrugged her touch off as if it stung.

SO, Clary moved forward to touch his arm, but this sets it up as if she’s in motion and hasn’t actually reached his arm yet, but then the next sentence is Jace shrugging off her touch, which I assumed hadn’t actually happened yet. THIS BOOK, GUYS.

Chapter 8 of The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones: Simon's character death is getting so painful for me. :(

And we’re back! Of all the books I’ve planned to read this summer, I cannot believe this one is taking me this long. Especially because I still haven’t finished my Dickens novel and I feel like I’m cheating by wasting time on this but WHATEVER.

Fairy just fell through a portal... thing, and the first sentence (like every other first sentence of each chapter in this book) made me stop and go “WHY”:

The sensation of falling was the worst part: her heart flew up into her throat and her stomach turned to water.

As opposed to the entirely solid stuff that your stomach has in it in the first place?

Chapter 7 of The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones: Fairy is the worst friend in existence.

I think weekly is the easiest way to update this, so let’s go with every Thursday/Friday (until that stops working because I have the dumbest schedule). I’m really hangry right now and waiting for pasta to boil so let’s take out some misplaced anger on the book:

They’re shown into the apartment with really vague ~mystical~ descriptions of what it looks like (if you’re picturing every fortune tellers apartment from 90s TV shows then you are absolutely correct). We also get to find out that Madame D (as she will henceforth be known) dabbles in literally every cultures’ kind of fortune-telling, which reads less as Madame D knowing her shit and more as CC just googling ‘fortune telling’ and mashing everything she could find into this one character.

Anyway, Mme D asks if they want tea and we get possibly the funniest (and not intentionally so) passage so far in this book. I’m not lying when I tell you I cackled with glee when I read it:

“I’ll have tea,”
[ ... ]
Jace succumbed. “All right. As long as it isn’t Earl Grey,” he added, wrinkling his fineboned nose. “I hate bergamot.”
Madame Dorothea cackled loudly and disappeared back through the bead curtain, leaving it swaying gently behind her.

Mme D is me, you guys. She’s me.

Chapter 6: Lesson learned, never try and read nonsensical books while drunk.

SO FUNNY STORY YOU GUYS. Last night I had like, half a bottle of wine (not even, haha) and was like, hey, I might be able to read CC’s novel while I’m a bit tipsy (I am the biggest lightweight ever at the moment, since I am actually a grandmother who never drinks).

Boy, was I wrong.

Chapter 5 of The Mortal Instruments: The City of Bones: I should apologise for the CSI references in this recap, but I'm not gonna.

Whaddup y’all, I’m in a coffee shop doing this recap because sometimes I like to pretend I’m a real writer who drinks coffee and only does this for a living instead of someone who packs people’s groceries into a paper bag.
When we last left Fairy she was being spirted away by possibly (and most likely) predatory Jace and he was taking her to the ‘institute’ which, yeah that sounds totally safe and reasonable, man we don’t know and just met.