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The Plot
In Bardugo’s Grishaverse, a world where certain people, the Grisha, can manipulate natural elements, a power that is both a gift and a curse. The Grisha are coveted for their abilities and feared for the same reason, treated as weapons or property depending on who controls them.
In the bustling city of Ketterdam, where greed runs deeper than law, Kaz Brekker is offered the impossible: break into the impenetrable Ice Court and rescue a kidnapped scientist who has created a drug that magnifies Grisha powers to godlike levels. Kaz gathers a crew of outcasts for the job, each dangerous, brilliant, and damaged in their own way:
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Inej, a spy with knives and quiet faith.
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Nina, a Grisha, controls the heart and more.
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Matthias, a soldier raised to hunt the Grisha.
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Jesper, a sharpshooter who never misses, unless he’s gambling.
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Wylan, a runaway with secrets and a talent for explosives.
The heist is only the beginning. What follows is a story of trust, betrayal, and survival among the broken.
My Breakdown
This book gave me:
🖤 A crew stitched together by grief and greed
🗝 A heist that’s really a story about found family
🔥 Three romances that shouldn’t work, and absolutely do
💔 Characters so damaged they circle back to beautiful
I watched Shadow and Bone on Netflix when it first came out, and loved it enough to pick up the original trilogy. But I DNFed it (As some of you remember, I’m a serial DNFer). Shadow and Bone was just too YA for me. There are YA books that I loved and recommended on this blog, like The Cruel Prince, An Ember in the Ashes, Throne of Glass, and Binding 13. However, there are some YA who feel too Juvenile.
While Six of Crows is technically YA, the only thing that felt YA was that there was no spice. The characters might be teenagers on paper, but their pain, trauma, and emotional depth read like those carrying a lifetime of scars. There’s nothing immature about what they endure or how they carry themselves.
The world-building – where magic users are both worshiped and enslaved. It’s a world that fears what it can’t control. That push and pull between power and persecution makes the story feel almost political.
And then there’s Nina. I LOVED her. She’s lush and unapologetically herself. She’s funny, sensual, and fierce. Her relationship with Matthias is one of the best enemies-to-lovers I’ve read. He begins as everything we should despise: superstitious, prejudiced, indoctrinated to see her as a monster. Yet Bardugo crafts their love story with such nuance and humanity that by the end, you believe in both of their redemption.
I’ve been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this.
Kaz Brekker is one of the best-written antiheroes I’ve read. He’s obsessed with revenge, calculating, violent, and utterly broken beneath the gloves he refuses to remove. Inej, with her quiet faith and deadly grace, carries the book’s moral core; together they build a romance that is all slow burn. They are painfully restrained, devastating in every touch that never happens.
Take a look at all the beautiful fan art of the Six of Crwos
What makes Six of Crows brilliant isn’t just the twisty heist or the wonderful banter; it’s how every member of this crew carries trauma that shapes them but doesn’t define them.
We are all someone’s monster.
