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This has been on my TBR forever, it seems.
I was charmed by the conceit of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, what reader wouldn't be? And I was looking forward to social commentary on post-Civil War Spain and life in the Fascist period. Ultimately, though, I was disappointed in the book. It turned out to be sheerest melodrama, overwrought and overblown, down to the bodies in the basement. The unraveling of the mystery of Carfax held my attention for a while, but long before the reveal I realized he was Lain Coubert and that Penelope was his sister. Just as an aside, a Penelope and a Beatriz? Nor were they the only too-obvious names.
It was fair enough for Ruiz Zafon to use the device of long-lost letters to advance the plot; the info dump from Father Ramos was clunky and the missive from Nuria was unforgivable, especially as it included things she could not possibly have known. The author got lazy and couldn't see his way to incorporate the information more organically, apparently.
I liked the battle between good and evil as personified by Fermin and Fumero and the evocation of life in Barcelona, the city as a living entity. The story itself, however, gets a huge meh from me. Perhaps if my expectations hadn't been so great I wouldn't have been so underwhelmed.
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