Review: A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Second reading] I read this book again even though I read it for the first time recently. I originally stopped reading somewhere in the second book because I lost my momentum. However, I found the first two of the series for 99 cents each so I decided to try again. My first go round was on ebook and it is not my preferred method, especially with longer books.

I really liked this first book. I knocked off a star because I thought it was unnecessarily long and there were some parts that were just hard to get through. I personally liked the amount of description of alchemy, wine, and food. I loved the historical references. I noticed the author is a professor of history and also writes a wine blog, and I like how she incorporated those interests into her storytelling. I liked all the different plot points and hope that over the next two novels everything kind of comes together.

In regards to the main characters, Diana and Matthew, I have mixed feelings. I feel like their "love" was kind of insta-love, which I'm not a fan of. There was a sort of explanation thrown out by Diana that "witches fall in love quickly," but I'm not sure if that was just added to explain their very speedy love for each other. The character, Diana, goes back and forth between being interesting and being somewhat flat. I wouldn't necessary call her weak because her inability to use her witchy powers is explained towards the end. Her opinion of herself did seem to be lacking some confidence, but it wasn't as bad as the female leads in other books where they talk about how disgusting they are through the whole thing. Matthew has more depth, in my opinion, although the predictable anger that seems to go with supernatural/bad boy stories is there. Why is everyone so angry all the time?? Having said all that, none of these character qualities was enough to turn me off the story or make me dislike them. I like their romance and their story.

I like the side characters in this story as well and I'm glad each of them was given some page time. I appreciated the characters and liked knowing more about them. It's easier to have an opinion on whether or not I like a character when I know plenty about them. I love the Bishop house and all its quirks. I think that was one of my favorite things about this book.

I would definitely recommend this book, but probably not to anyone who is more fond of books that have a lot of events full of action that happen close together. This book is more for lingering over and takes a certain level of patience. I myself have to be in the mood to read a book like this and will not be reading the second one in the series until I feel like I have the patience to finish it without getting frustrated. I will be reading some faster paced books in the meantime. :)

Challenges:
2017 Goodreads Challenge
2017 MMD Reading for Fun - A book you've already read
2017 MMD Reading for Growth - Three books by the same author (1 of 3)
2017 Pop Sugar Challenge - A book you got from a used book sale

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