Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Book of Life

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The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

28 reviews

jess_justmaybeperfect's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense 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

4.0

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siglerbooknook's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

4.25

!!!CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS!!!

This book has proved complicated to review. I have many conflicting thoughts and feelings now that I've finished the whole story.

While the ending wasn't completely satisfying it does make sense, both with the plot, and with the way the main characters have been built. Several goals from all 3 books felt very rushed. Big bads that have been overwhelmingly powerful for 3 books were a cliffnote in the ending.

Of all the characters in the book I liked Diana and Matthew the least. Their personalities while well rounded, are very similar to how they were in the beginning of the first book. I don't feel like they grew much. By this book I felt like Matthew should have learned to have some faith in Diana and Diana should stop second guessing everything.
The side characters however, completely make up for it. I love almost every other character in the book, even if some feel like completely different people from the last time we saw them.

I felt like the plot dragged a little in the middle. We spend the entire second book on Diana learning to use her magic, so further learning in this book felt repetitive. I didn't really need to know how she comes up with words and ingredients for spells multiple times to understand she was growing as a witch.

I did love the big reveal at the end. Harkness does a wonderful job pulling all the tiny clues together. Any detail can be tied back to the reveal beautifully. I do wish she'd answered a few of the broader questions in a little more detail, like what daemons, witches, and vampires are.

Over all I enjoyed the story and am mostly satisfied with the ending.

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gillian_aftanas's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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booknerderika's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.0

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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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toastyghosty13's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

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

2.5

This book was a below average way to end off the trilogy, in my opinion. There were a lot of things that I felt ruined this book, mainly the fact that it centered around Diana being pregnant and protecting the twins rather than doing anything. I hate any pregnancy arc in a story because then it seems like the character is walking on egg shells, and god forbid any woman try to save the world while pregnant. I have read other stories where a character is pregnant but is still able to help save the world and actually makes quite a large impact, so Diana being written in the opposite manner is a huge disappointment.

I also have issues with the fact that

Gallowglass has supposedly been in love with Diana this entire time. This gives a huge ick since he has called her "Auntie" since the 2nd book of the series. It is also just strange to include his infatuation for her as a detail since there were never any hints or evidence that he was feeling this way until she saw his tattoo of her in this book. It felt very forced. He starts to sulk a lot and Diana hopes he will find someone to love, which sounds like he might meet someone in the future but he basically just disappears with no explanation.

This entire book centers around finding the book of life and

Benjamin and Knox. I do not understand why Diana is able to do a tracking spell for the 3 missing pages, the book, and TJ Weston but is unable to do the same for Knox and Benjamin despite the fact that Knox is able to track her with his own spell. She is a weaver, she should be able to just create her own spell for this.

I also do not understand the ending, where

Philippes ghost returns and says that he "has been looking for the one that could do his burdens without breaking" and that "it isn't over yet". This obviously implies some sort of continuation and that more will come, yet this is the last book of a trilogy? At least we got some closure about how Diana and Matthew and Sophie and Nathan can have children, but there are still so many other things left open, like Emily's death and her actions shortly before it, plus anything on Gallowglass as well as what happens next with Phoebe and Marcus.

Another bit about the ending of the book is that

the fight against Benjamin and Knox is so lackluster. The entire book is a buildup to Diana and crew trying to find them and the book of life, just for her to kick their butts in ~2 pages, which is considerably less than the amount of text it took to describe her giving birth to the twins. This was exceptionally a let down to me on both fronts of too little combative showdown and too many birth descriptors. I did not need to know about her contractions, nor did I find it relevant in anyway to the main plot line. Even the existence of the twins seems so pointless to me because they bring basically no value.

In addition, Benjamin and Knox are such evil and disgusting creatures that have committed horrific actions against others; they deserve to have a gruesome and drawn out death. I feel like no justice was done and that their quick deaths were letting them off very easily

Overall, I was pretty disappointed in the way this trilogy has ended and I am kind of upset that I had bought the hardcover versions after liking the first two books so much. I almost hope there is a 4th book to actually tie it all together with all of the loose ends still left, but at the same time I don't know that I would bother reading it.

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lucyatoz's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Diana and Matthew. Witch and vampire. Their love has brought conflict and hope. But only together can they learn at last what the witches discovered so many centuries ago. And it will have consequences for all...

The Book of Life is the last novel in a trilogy which tells the story of Diana, a witch, and Matthew, a Vampire, coming together (Book 1, A Discovery of Witches) and their time living in Elizabethan England in 1590-1 (Book 2, Shadow of Night), picking up their tale now that they have returned to the present day.

The final book in this trilogy brings in the wider De Clermont family and is a much darker story compared to the first two novels. It also does brings nicely to an end the story of the couple's troubles with the Congregation and their violation of the Covenant. I do hope that further novels are written about some of the other characters in the story, such as Gallowglass, Matthew's nephew, and their children Phillip and Rebecca.

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