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Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra's near-comatose abuelo begins to say "No importa" over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep.... Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on.
Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order's secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick's supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family's past, present, and future.
The idea of shadow shaping could really be a nice and promising thing, but the course of the whole story felt really odd that I felt really tortured in finishing it. For starters, it fails to convince me that it is a fantasy novel. It felt so flat and confusing on what is happening with the characters. I for one is not a fan of puzzling characteristics, and I really do not want to make some assumptions just because the author had not given me any clear direction on what was really happening. There are a lot of holes in the story, the characters are not even interesting. There are definitely no character development in this book. I felt like: "Am I so dumb to understand this book?" Or I just couldn't force myself to like it because I really don't know what was happening till the very end of this book. I tried, I really tried to like this book, but really, I just ended skimming some pages, but it would really be a waste of my time if I didn't give it a try until the very end. And unfortunately. It is really a waste of time.
 by Daniel José Older){kind=link}