Goodreads Summary:
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's the only creature who can break its spell.
My Thoughts:
I love this book. Actually I should just say that I love this series but since I intend on reviewing each book separately I will start with, I love this book. First, you can tell that the author knows her shit. She is a straight up academic and she doesn't dumb anything down. I admit to having to look up some of the history mentioned and from my limited research I could see that this lady was a legit historian. After reading her books I wish I was still in college and I was in her class. She may have changed my mind on my major of Political Science to History. Enough fangirling and on with my actual review.
Diana has a stick up her butt about her family history. Which frankly I can't blame her. Who wants to grow up with an infamous witch's name anywhere near Salem, Mass? No one. Halloween would be a massive pain in the ass. Not to mention state history in elementary school, middle school, and high school. Long story short Diana didn't love her witch connection and it really didn't help that the family was still full of practicing witches.
Our girl Diana grew up thinking that she was shit at witchcraft. She couldn't even light a damn candle, which is basically the shoe tying of spells. So she gave up and became a school nerd, as ya do when life is a pickle. She decided to focus on history, specifically alchemist history. While researching a key note speech Diana is in England working in an Oxford library when she comes across a witchy book. Since Diana hasn't been training as a witch, much the opposite, she doesn't understand the power she feels coming from the pages. I really liked that the way this interaction with the book was described in the book. Sometimes when opening an old book I like to put my hand on the cover, and in a way, introduce myself to the book. No, I don't think that I am of the witchy variety. I just love books. And so does Diana.
This book was written for book nerds, who like a good story, can find bits of themselves in each character, and appreciates that the author thinks we can keep up. There is nothing worse than when an intelligent writer breaks things down for the peanut gallery. That might sound snobbish of me but I like that not everyone will appreciate the approach of this book. I don't think this book was written for those who exclusively read trashy romance novels.
Diana and Matthew give us the romance but I like that the characters treat each other as equals with different strengths. Sure Matthew gets annoying with his manly shit, but I think in a lot of ways that furthers his development as a character. He recognizes that he is being a butt-head and then he works on fixing it. Not all characters act like real people who are self aware. I love this aspect of Deborah Harkness's writing, her characters feel like real people. They are flawed, they can can annoying and cliched but they recognize these parts of themselves along with the extraordinary parts of themselves.
I would recommend this book to lovers of vampire books, witchy books, romance books, and historical fiction books. It could be classified in some ways as all of those genres but at the same time it doesn't fully fit into any of them.
While writing this review I was listening to the first episode of Grown-ish.
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