Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - A Discovery of Witches

Reviews tagging 'Kidnapping'

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

30 reviews

czoltak's review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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

3.0

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stavoosh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

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

5.0

Wow. I felt like a child reading my favorite series while reading this book. It has every element I love: beautiful prose, logical storyline, high stakes, imaginative world-building, intellectual content, and not to mention the romance of all romances.
The story follows Diana, who studies the history of alchemy. The witch who represses her magic comes across an enchanted book in Oxford and returns it when she is unable to understand its magic. The plot takes off once creatures start pressuring her to recall the book for their own selfish reasons. Matthew, an old and well-respected vampire, originally wants the book for his own noble reason and they proceed to fall in love in their quest to understand the book, why everyone wants it, and why Diana cannot control her magic.
Diana and Matthew's love lifted off the pages and felt sincere in a magical way. I loved the slight enemies to lovers and later, a touch of fate. Harkness takes care to develop these characters with all their faults, personalities, and past creating dynamic characters whose actions made sense.
I loved the historical aspects of the book. I learned so much about European history which made reading such a fun learning experience. I also loved the way vampires, witches, and daemons were very sophisticated creatures that were explained adequately.
As someone who watched the show before reading the book, many of my questions were answered and I was very intrigued the whole way through. I prolonged this read as much as possible because I didn't want it to end.
I definitely recommend this book to people who like historical settings, calls to philosophical and historical texts, a plot of mystery, fantasy that blends into the real world, and romance!

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amy_reading_23's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

This book is complicated. Not as in it hard to follow (although I had watched the TV show beforehand so that gave me an advantage) but that I'm not sure what to make of it. There were some bits I really enjoyed. And some bits that made me uncomfortable. I don't like how Matthew treats Diana, I think their relationship is pretty toxic tbh and a bit misogynistic in times. They also excuse too much of his behaviour as "ifs because he's a vampire". But the plot is interesting and I still want to read the next two sometime, I'm just not necessarily in a rush.

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joey_paige's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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mimimars's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The book is basically a fantasy romance. It wasted a lot of words and pages into what I consider “nothing” resolving into a lot of “nothing”. I think this book is meant to establish the plot for the next ones, but it didn’t do it in a way that pulled me in. In fact, I really just wanted to be done with it. Almost left it on a DNF pile. It had promise, but wasn’t well executed.

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