When Your Eleven-Year-Old Niece Highlights All The Grammar Errors
Here’s what I stumbled into: a YA urban fantasy from 2007 that sold millions of copies, spawned a movie and a TV show, and inspired readers to write multi-thousand-word takedowns comparing it scene-by-scene to Harry Potter and Star Wars. When a book generates reviews that include character-by-character plagiarism charts, I need answers.
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare launched The Mortal Instruments series—six books (later expanded to more) about teenage Shadowhunters protecting New York from demons. It’s been everywhere: bestseller lists, BookTok, that disastrous 2013 movie, a three-season TV show. Millions of readers adore it. Thousands of others have written doctoral-thesis-length reviews explaining why it’s derivative garbage.
The divide here is WILD. And it all traces back to one word that appears in almost every critical review: plagiarism.
Time to track down what readers are actually saying.
THE INTEL
Here’s what we’re working with:
- Book: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
- Published: March 27, 2007
- Series: The Mortal Instruments, Book 1 (originally 6 books, expanded universe ongoing)
- Goodreads Rating: 4.11 stars with 1.65 million+ ratings and 82,400+ reviews
- Amazon: Available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audiobook
- Audiobook: Narrated by Ari Graynor
- Genre: YA urban fantasy
- Adaptations: 2013 movie (bombed), 2016-2019 TV show Shadowhunters (3 seasons)
WHAT I FOUND (THE LEGWORK)
I dug through reader reviews and tracked down the plagiarism controversy.goodreads.com/book/show/256683.City_of_Bones”>82,000+ Goodreads reviews, Amazon ratings, and tracking down the plagiarism controversy that shadows this series. The split is dramatic: passionate love or detailed hatred, with almost no middle ground.
The “Best Thing I’ve Ever Read” Brigade
Teen readers especially LOVE this book. Multiple five-star reviews praise the world-building, the Shadow hunter lore, the action sequences, and especially Jace Wayland—the sarcastic, damaged, impossibly beautiful love interest who inspired “Jace-mania” across the fandom.
Goodreads reviewer Cara wrote: “Clare does a superb job of drawing you in. Maybe the plot isn’t completely unique but the world she created is…The whole shadowhunter thing oozes with coolness. I mean half angel, half kick butt people! It doesn’t get much cooler than that.”
The fans don’t deny similarities to other works—they just don’t care. For them, the combination of supernatural New York, demon-fighting teens with magic runes, and angsty romance works regardless of whether the bones (pun intended) came from elsewhere.
The “This Is Literally Harry Potter and Star Wars” Opposition
Then there are the readers who arrived with receipts. Top Goodreads reviewer “A” wrote a legendary 2011 review (updated in 2018) that breaks down character-by-character comparisons:
“The Mortal Instruments = Harry Potter/Star Wars/X-Men… Clary Fray = Ginny Weasley/Princess Leia/Rogue/Wolverine… Jace Wayland = Draco Malfoy/Luke Skywalker/Han Solo… Valentine = Voldemort/Darth Vader/Magneto… The Institute = The Knight Bus/Hogsmeade/Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters…”
The list goes on. And on. Luke Skywalker/Leia incest parallels, The Circle as Death Eaters, portals as Floo Network, “mundies” as “muggles.” The review has been liked thousands of times and sparked years of debate in the comments.
Another detailed critical review from Tatiana noted: “Clare borrows so liberally from ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Buffy,’ it is simply impossible to overlook…Whatever is original in COB, is not quite thought through.”
The Plagiarism History
Here’s where it gets messy: Cassandra Clare started as a fanfiction writer in the Harry Potter fandom. Her Draco Trilogy was hugely popular. It was also involved in a documented plagiarism controversy where she was accused of copying dialogue from Buffy, Red Dwarf, and other sources without attribution.
When City of Bones published years later, readers familiar with the fanfic history immediately spotted familiar patterns. Review after review mentions her fanfiction background and connects it to the book’s derivative feel.
The eleven-year-old niece story? Real. One reviewer described borrowing the book from her niece and finding “pages upon pages of highlighted words…She had gone through the book and highlighted grammatical errors. There were misspellings, comma splices, and just general bad phrasing.”
The Editing Problems
Beyond plot similarities, readers flagged extensive technical issues:
– POV shifts mid-paragraph (mostly 3rd person Clary, suddenly 1st person, occasional other character POVs)
– Character name inconsistencies (Clary’s father called Jonathan, then John)
– Word repetition (“brindled” to describe every wolf, constantly)
– “Approximately nine hundred and thirty-three million” similes and metaphors
As one reviewer noted: “I don’t really think this book was edited at all.”
The Controversial Romance
The Jace/Clary romance includes a Luke/Leia situation: they fall for each other, kiss, THEN discover they might be siblings. Multiple reviews called this “disturbing,” “nasty,” and “tacky.” Yes, it gets resolved later in the series, but readers had to sit through multiple books of incest-adjacent angst first.
Tatiana’s review summarized: “Although I know how Jace/Clary ‘family matter’ is resolved in the end, I don’t find possibly incestuous relationships appealing.”
Platform-Specific Buzz
BookTok: Younger readers discovering the series years after publication love it unreservedly. They either don’t know about the plagiarism history or don’t consider it relevant.
Goodreads: The battleground. Comments on critical reviews include personal attacks, death threats, and years-long arguments. Reviewer “A” updated in 2018 to note receiving abuse “about my looks, about my writing abilities…even a few messages telling me to kill myself. All because you don’t like my opinion of a book.”
Adaptations: The 2013 movie flopped critically and commercially. The 2016-2019 Freeform TV show Shadowhunters found a dedicated audience but never broke mainstream.
What’s MISSING
No major mainstream critical coverage. Despite massive sales and multimedia adaptations, this stayed in the YA bubble. Publications that reviewed it treated it as commercial YA fluff, not as literature worth serious analysis.
MY ANALYSIS (BASED ON THE EVIDENCE)
The plagiarism shadow never lifted. Clare’s fanfiction history and the documented copying in her fics follow her published work. Fair or not, readers approach these books looking for similarities—and they find them everywhere.
Teen readers don’t care about originality the way adult readers do. The five-star reviews come overwhelmingly from younger readers encountering these tropes for the first time. For them, Shadowhunters ARE original because they haven’t read the source material being “borrowed from.”
The editing genuinely was bad. This isn’t subjective opinion—the POV shifts, name inconsistencies, and grammar errors are documented across hundreds of reviews. Whether the publisher rushed it or overlooked problems, the text has issues.
The incest plotline was a miscalculation. Even fans who loved everything else struggled with the Jace/Clary sibling reveal. It’s a Star Wars homage that didn’t translate well to a YA romance where readers were shipping them hard.
The Ari Graynor audiobook doesn’t get mentioned much in reviews, suggesting most readers experienced this in print where the grammar issues are more visible.
THE QUESTION NOBODY’S ASKING
How did this become a phenomenon despite the controversy?
Most books with plagiarism accusations fade into obscurity. City of Bones sold millions. The answer? Timing. It hit in 2007 when YA urban fantasy was exploding post-Twilight. The target audience was young enough not to know the fanfic drama and hungry enough for supernatural teen romance to overlook the derivative elements. By the time critical readers caught up, the series was already massive.
THE VERDICT
Read if: You’re a teen discovering urban fantasy for the first time, you love angsty supernatural romance, or you don’t care about originality if the story moves fast.
Skip if: You’ve read Harry Potter and Star Wars and will be distracted by constant déjà vu, poor editing bothers you, or incest-adjacent romance makes you uncomfortable.
Watch Shadowhunters instead if: You want the story without the grammar errors—the show smoothed over some issues (and created new ones).
Try the audiobook with Ari Graynor if: You’re going in—hearing it read aloud might smooth over some technical issues.
Fair warning: The plagiarism controversy is real, documented, and extensively discussed online. Go in informed.
THE COCKTAIL
The Derivative
(Looks fancy, tastes like something you’ve had before)
- 2 oz vodka (clear and basic, like the originality here)
- 1 oz blue curaçao (for the Rune glow aesthetic)
- 1 oz peach schnapps (borrowed from a Sex on the Beach)
- Splash of sprite (lifted from a Vodka Sprite)
- Garnish with an orange slice (taken from a Screwdriver)
Mix everything together. It looks pretty and Instagram-worthy. Tastes exactly like six other cocktails you’ve had. You’ll enjoy it if you haven’t tried the originals.
Tasting notes: Sweet, accessible, and derivative. Goes down easy if you’re not thinking too hard about where each ingredient came from.
THE BOTTOM LINE
City of Bones is a 2007 YA urban fantasy with 4.11 stars on Goodreads from 1.65 million+ ratings showing massive divide. Critical reviews include character-by-character plagiarism charts comparing it to Harry Potter and Star Wars. Author has documented fanfiction plagiarism history. Spawned movie (flopped) and TV show (cult following).
Got a book with plagiarism accusations, fanfiction origins, or documented copying? Drop the links to the controversies below. I track receipts, not rumors. Vague “I heard she stole it” claims get ignored.