Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Открытие ведьм

Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Открытие ведьм by Дебора Харкнесс, Deborah Harkness

26 reviews

mcdevimm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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lenorayoder's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

I really liked this book! It was a bit of an odd reading experience, because once the romance gets going it starts to feel like a different and slightly worse book. I loved the first 15% or so of this book and thought it would be a five star read. At that point it becomes clear that Diana and Matthew's romance is going to progress a lot more quickly than I thought, and we start to run into a lot of romance novel cliches. This would have normally merited a 3 star rating, but I think Harkness' world building manages to make the cliches make enough since that I'll forgive their presence, even if I think the book would be better without them and with a slower relationship build. Diana's absolute denial

and spellbinding

make the different tone of the beginning of the book make sense, but I think it's a shame that the beginning feels so much better than the rest of the book.

I loved all of the world building, and I think it helps the romance and certain plot elements seem less ridiculous. The fact that the relationship we see in this book takes place over

40 days

seems stupid, but Harkness makes it clear that Diana and Matthew are not human, and holding them to human standards is a mistake. These are creatures who can literally experience

love at first sight, as shown by Diana's parents. That's not a dramatization, sometimes it actually happens

. That said, I still think the romance isn't well-written, and is the weakest part of the book by far. Diana could seem like a Mary Sue, but you have to remember that her

mother, Rebecca, seems to have seen her future before even conceiving her. Diana was basically born and raised to create some serious change in this world

. I mean, someone has to do it, right? Of course that's going to be the person an author writes about.

This book was consistently engaging and enjoyable to read. I was constantly theorizing and asking questions. I'm looking forward to getting more answers in the next books, and I know I will because this is clearly a planned out series that's laying groundwork with this first book. I wish the romance felt as polished as the beginning of the book made me think it would be, but I had a fun time and was never bored.

Final thoughts: I love the Bishop house, we stan characters getting privacy! I hope someone kills

Gerbert dead soon

, what the fuck was that with

Juliette and how many people has he done that to

??? I don't get why everyone was alarmed at the idea of

Matt killing Satu. Like she's going around deeply torturing witches and who knows what else? Sometimes when you behave like that people kill you

! Agatha being the only decent

member of the Congregation

we've seen makes me curious to find out if it's always been

corrupt/fucked up

, or if that's something that developed over time. Don't like the whole

bloodline = power

thing even though it's kind of central to the plot. Given the timeline of these books I think it would be very funny if Diana

gets back to the present "quickly" enough that Hamish never sends her letter backing out of the conference,

and the entire series ends with her giving the keynote presentation she started this book being stressed out about. Perfect ending.

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_marycappiello3's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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cgward00's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

DNF at 84%

I should've paid more attention to the dozens of content warnings this book has: around 78% the book revealed that the trilogy is actually all about pregnancy and how the three supernatural races are meant to begin interbreeding. Pregnancy is a deal-breaker in books for me. A shame since I otherwise enjoyed the characters and vaguely historio-supernatural vibes even if some of it was a bit one-note at times.

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torturedreadersdept's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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nuttus's review against another edition

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The plot is dragging and filled with unnecessary descriptions about wine, tea, food, exercise, smells, alchemy and I don’t even remember what else. Descriptions that seemed to be just there only for the sake of being there. They had nothing to do with the plot or anything but making the book longer than necessary. Editor of the book did not do their job for leaving them there.

The characters at the beginning were interesting, but as the book progressed they lost all their personality. Instead of development they had a decline, especially Diana. The autonomous, strong willed and smart professor became a weak damsel in distress acting like a scared child, depending on the vampire to make every single decision for her - what she was and wasn’t allowed to do.

Which brings us to Matthew who is nothing more than an alpha male podcaster who has no other reason to be obeyed than a because I say so. At first our heroine is not cool with that, until she seems to start suffering from Stockholm syndrome and just obeyes. Matthew is also manipulative, secretive and possessive douche who veils all of that to being concerned about Diana’s safety and just shrugs his shoulders saying that’s just me. Zero willingness to learn anything else.

Diana is also so ridiculously overpowered that it’s not believable. First she doesn’t want to use her magic and then she can’t. And then she suddenly learns do it perfectly in five minutes. All this screams an Y/N wattpad fanfic written by a 10-year old.

Oh and I’m having a hard time understanding how this heroine is a respected scholar when she is literally so dumb that it takes her almost the whole book to understand that her mother told her her future in stories. Even if the mom literally tells her the story while she is living it at the moment. How can someone so dumb be a scientist? Before realizing this she of course had to have a melodramatic self pity temper tantrum.

The plot line also is all over the place. There is secret society or two, a magical manuscript, Diana’s superpowers, death of her parents, forbidden love story and a slow extinction of creatures. With all this going on, not much really happens in the book. Like at all. They just drink wine and read crazy old books, smell each other and sleep together while whispering cheesy crap to each other.

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pewterwolf's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.75

At the time of writing this, this would be my fourth time reading this (though I have only read the series through once), and while I am a fan of this world and the characters, there are little things that irritated me (pacing, when important information is shared to the reader [and this is a very detail-heavy book], a tad insta-love for my taste).

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