Overall Rating: ****
Romance: ***
Reading Rate: ***
A Discovery of Witches is one of those books that I kept hearing rave reviews for,ย plus it is now a TV series so I wanted to read before I started watching. I started out loving the this book and I wanted to love it so so much, for me it just started to get a little off and slow towards the end but overall was a good read.
What I liked:
- I like the magical world set up with Witches, Daemons and Vampires all living alongside the human population.
- I am a huge inta love fan so I love the immediate steam between Matt and Diana
- I loved all of the nerdy elements to the story. Matt being a scientist and Diane a historian. A book that is largely about books is usually pretty wonderful.
What I didn’t like:
- At times conversations seemed to go down the rabbit hole of history or science to the point I found it hard to get through.
- I feel like the main characters were very reasonable throughout the book and seemed to start losing their grip on their feelings towards the end. I know this happens after certain experiences, I just felt like they were suddenly almost different characters then the people I had grown to enjoy.
- There is a lot of typical stereotyping between humans and types of creatures. It bugs me when the main cause of an issue is being with endless experience and knowledge just being narrow minded.
This is actually the first book in Harkness’s All Souls trilogy. I started reading the second book right away as the ending of this one left me needing to know what happens next. About 150 pages in I lost interest and have placed the book in my Did Not Finish pile for the time being. I still plan to come back around and finish the whole series at some point… might try to use audio book to help me make it through.
Synopsis:
Deep in the stacks of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
Have you read the series? Does it get better and worth reading through to the end? Let me know in the comments below.
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