A review by lenorayoder
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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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