Review (4.5 / 5 Stars):
Wow... if someone could take Twilight and toss in a bit of Harry Potter along with a whole load of other downworlder characters that we've never met before. The twist with Valentine was a little bit predictable and the brother / sister thing has been done again and again but I still ate it all up. I'm in love with Jace. This is Edward Cullen all over again :p
Synopsis (SPOILERS):
When Clary witnesses a murder by a group of teens at a club she is surprised that Simon and the club's security guard cannot see the killer, a teenage boy, called Jace. Jace claims that the boy he murdered was a demon before Clary leaves with Simon, confused by how she can see them yet no one else could. The next day Clary and Simon, while at a coffee shop, Clary sees Jace yet again, once again invisible to everyone else but her. After hesitantly going outside with him, Jace offers to have Clary meet his "tutor". Before she can answer, she receives a distressing phone call from her mother, frantically demanding her not to come home obviously to avoid some type of danger, she rushes home anyway. After arriving home, she finds her mother missing, the apartment trashed, and a monstrous creature (later revealed to being a Ravener demon) waiting. She defeats the creature by shoving Jace’s Sensor down its throat, but is injured in the process. Jace finds her and takes her to his home. His home is called "The Institute", an old Gothic cathedral in New York that humans, known by the term "mundanes" in their world, can't see because it is concealed magically by a glamour. Here, she recuperates; sleeping for three days. After she wakes up, she meets Hodge Starkweather, Jace's tutor, as well as his adoptive-siblings Isabelle and Alec Lightwood.
Hodge then acquires the help of a monk with magical powers, called a "Silent Brother", Jeremiah, to discover how Clary is able to see Shadowhunters despite being a mundane and why she was attacked. Jeremiah discovers a block on Clary's mind, keeping her memories sealed, and takes her and Jace to the City of Bones, where the Silent Brothers attempt to break it. Although the attempt fails, Clary discovers flashes of information, particularly the name Magnus Bane, which with Isabelle's help, Clary traces Magnus Bane to a party, which she attends with Jace, Simon, Alec and Isabelle. There, they discover that Magnus is the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and he placed the block on Clary at her mother's request, revealing to her how when Clary was little, her mother realized Clary could see creatures of the Shadowhunter world, called the Sight, that she initially hoped Clary hadn't developed, hoping she would live a normal and non-Shadowhunter life. However, when she caught Clary at the age of three seeing and trying to play with faeries one day, she realized Clary would discover the Shadowhunter world if she continued to see such creatures. She went to Magnus with hopes of repressing her daughter's memories so she would never discover the Shadowhunter world and had been sending her to Magnus every 2-3 months ever since, where he would block her memories of seeing anything related to the Shadowhunter world; keeping her in the dark about her true self. Although his attempts to help regain her memories are futile yet again and he tells her she may never regain her memories ever again. During the party, Simon is turned into a rat by a faerie drink, and Jace and Clary go to a vampire-infested hotel to rescue Simon who has been taken there by a vampire.
Clary and Jace are helped into the hotel by a teenager named Raphael. He then betrays them and reveals that he is the leader of the vampire coven that are residing inside that hotel, and soon Clary and Jace are fighting for their lives. They are saved by werewolves who claim they want Clary, but Clary and Jace escape and rescue Simon, who eventually returns to his human form, but get injured in the process. Here she and Simon share an intimate moment where they hug each other in relief for the other's safety; however Jace, upon seeing this moment, "looks away as though the sun is too bright".
At the institute when Jace and Simon heal, in the hallway, Clary is approached by Alec and the two have a fight when Alec demands she return to her own world, claiming she is only hurting Jace by making him take dangerous risks. When she reveals that she knows he is gay and how he feels about Jace, he's in love with him, and rephrases a statement Jace commented about him earlier in the novel, Alec pins her against the wall demanding she never reveal his feelings to Jace before walking off, clearly stunned by his actions. Later on that night, Clary finds Jace outside her room looking for her, wanting to take her to celebrate her 16th birthday. He takes Clary to the Institute's Greenhouse where the two talk and eat a meal. He then shows her how the flowers in the Greenhouse bloom every night at midnight. As they return back to her room, Jace and Clary share their first passionate kiss. However, upon a misunderstanding why Simon was in her room when he comes out to look for her (the two chatted and fell asleep on her bed), things are left on something of a sour note and Jace leaves. In Clary's room, Simon and Clary argue when Simon insults Clary on her choice in men. However when Clary brings up Isabelle and how he had been flirting with her, Simon, on impulse, angrily reveals to Clary he had only been trying to get her jealous, shocking her. Simon then confesses to her how he has been in love with her for over ten years and had only flirted with Isabelle to see how she felt about him back. He then further says how he's upset how she failed to notice his feelings for her despite how obvious it had been to everyone else. This all leaving Clary stunned as he leaves her room.
Later on, while drawing during her upset emotions over the night's events, Clary realizes where the Mortal Cup is and she, Jace, Isabelle, Alec, and Simon go and retrieve it at Madam Dorthea's apartment (by Clary's apartment). Alec gets injured by a greater demon and nearly dies, but Magnus Bane manages to heal him at the Institute. When Clary and Jace give the Mortal Cup to Hodge, he reveals he's actually working for a man named Valentine who is meant to be dead. Valentine kidnaps Jace saying he was going to take Jace to his father, making Clary fear for him since Jace's father is told to be dead. Clary goes after Hodge, but is kidnapped in the process. When Clary wakes up she finds out Luke took her, but for the sake of her safety. Clary then finds out that Valentine is actually her biological father (her mother having told her that he father was dead as a child), and Luke and Clary track down Jace and Valentine. Luke and his werewolf pack raid Valentine's lair, but they are ambushed.
During the attack, Luke and Clary get inside, and while Luke is distracted, Clary finds Valentine and Jace. Valentine reveals to them that he is actually Jace's father, making them siblings, shocking and horrifying both Jace and Clary (who by then realized that they have fallen in love with each other). Luke then returns to fight Valentine, along with Jace's help, but Valentine escapes to Idris, where he has now hidden the Cup. Clary retrieves her mother, who is in a coma caused by a potion, and takes her to a hospital. In the meantime, Alec has been healed by Magnus Bane and he and Clary decide to start fresh. Afterwards, Clary and Jace meet at the Institute and express their frustration that they cannot be together like they once believed.**source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bones_(Mortal_Instruments)
