Book 20: Shadow of Night

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*Spoiler Alert: This is book two in a series. To read my review of book one please go here.

Book Summary:
Diana Bishop, a witch, and Matthew Clairmont, a vampire, have timewalked back to the year 1590 not only in an attempt to get another look at the enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782 but also to find a witch that can train the spellbound Diana. Once there they are plunged into Elizabethan London, where mistrust lies around every corner. As Matthew's past comes back to haunt him, the two must draw closer together if they are to survive the vampire's shadowed history. And in the midst of turbulence among witches, Diana learns that she is not only a powerful witch but a unique one as well.

My Review:
I really wanted to love this book. If you read my review for the first in the series, you'll know that even though there was much I didn't like about A Discovery of Witches, overall I was swept up in the story. Shadow of Night, however, was completely different. After about ten pages in, I was terribly bored by the storyline. As far as characters go, I was really annoyed (even more so than I was in the first book) by how Matthew treats Diana. Harkness tries to explain it away numerous times by the fact that vampires are possessive, but her explanations fell on deaf ears with me. It just wasn't a good enough reason for him to be continually angry with her. The alchemical stuff was also just a little too much. I understand that Diana is a historian who studies alchemy, but there was just way too much of it written into this novel. If I wanted to read a book about alchemy, I would have picked up a book specifically on alchemy. On top of that, making Diana's and Matthew's blood do extraordinary things in alchemical experiments was too far fetched for me, even in a fantasy novel.

There really was very little that I enjoyed about this book. One of the things that I liked, though, was the introduction of more characters. I really liked the addition of Gallowglass (Matthew's nephew), Annie (a young witch who comes to live with them), and Jack (a homeless boy they take in). I felt that these characters added a lot to the story. I also liked when Matthew and Diana visited Sept-Tours to see his father. This, actually, was one of the only parts of the plot that I enjoyed.

Overall this book is not as good as A Discovery of Witches, and I can honestly say that I have absolutely no desire to read the final book of the trilogy.

As far a family friendliness goes, this is definitely an adult book. There are curse words thrown around a good bit (though I don't believe there are any f-bombs), and there are numerous sex scenes (some of which are a little more graphic than others).

My Rating: 3/10

Book 18: The Storyteller

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Book Summary:
After the death of her mother, Sage Singer becomes an introvert who works through the night, trying to escape her memories and loneliness by doing the one thing she knows, baking bread. When Josef Weber begins coming to the bakery, the two form an unusual friendship. This all changes when he confesses to her that he was a Nazi, and he has spent the last seventy years hiding from his past. He only asks two things, that she forgive him being that she is of Jewish decent and that she kill him. With confusion over her own identity and the idea that her closest friend could have done something so terrible, Sage must make the toughest decision of her life.

My Review:
Let me start by saying that I am not a huge Jodi Picoult fan. It's not that her books are awful because she's actually a very good writer; it's just that all her books seem like a lifetime movie in the making. This one is no different. It was very well written, and I liked the idea behind it. A former Nazi asking forgiveness of the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor is a great plot. However, this storyline is squeezed in among an affair, a romance, a death, and about ten other subplots. Even though this is the main point of the book, at times it got lost amid all the other things that were going on. I really like that Picoult did so much research before beginning this book. She pretty much learned everything she could about Nazis so she could weave a plausible back-story. She also learned about what someone who actually hunts down Nazis for a living does to find and prosecute World War II criminals. Lastly, she learned the intricacies of bread baking, which being that this is something that I actually know about, I thoroughly appreciated that Sage actually knew her way around baking bread. I think my favorite thing about his book was the ending, and Sage finding out that sometimes people aren't who they seem to be.

Though I enjoyed Minka's story from the war, I felt that it drawn out longer than it needed to be. I honestly skipped pages during her story because it literally went on for well over a hundred pages, and though it had everything to do with her story as a Holocaust survivor, I didn't feel like it was as important to the plot as Josef's story which was not nearly as long. I also did not like the subplot of Sage dating a married man. I don't feel that it added anything to the story other than causing Leo to judge her for it. I understand the reasoning behind the author using this, as it's a device to help us see how much Sage changes from the beginning of the book until the end, I just thought the book would have been fine without it.

Overall, I thought the book was very well written, it just wasn't really my type of book. I think that if you really like Lifetime movies, you would probably thoroughly enjoy this novel. There is some swearing and a good amount of sexual references.

My Rating: 6/10

Book 17: A Discovery of Witches

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Book Summary:
Diana Bishop is an alchemical history professor doing research while at Oxford University. When she requests a manuscript called Ashmole 782 at the Bodleian Library, she believes it to be an ordinary book, that is, until she gets her hands on it. Even though she has tried to keep all magic out of her life, she can tell that this ancient text is bound with it. Insisting that she wants nothing to do with her magic, she makes a few notes and then sends the book back. What she doesn't realize, however, is that this text has been lost for centuries, and the magical community will do anything to get thier hands on it. Soon after, witches, daemons, and vampires begin appearing at the Bodleian. One in particular is Matthew Clairmont, a distinguished scientist who also happens to be a vampire. Once Matthew enters Diana's life, she finds that nothing will ever be the same.

My Review:
If Harry Potter and Twilight were to have a baby, I'm pretty sure it would be this book. That being said, Deborah Harkness is a better writer than Stephanie Meyer, so this was a halfway decent book. I really enjoyed the fact that because Harkness is a history professor by trade, she somehow manages to make a novel that is one part historical fiction and one part modern fantasy. I have very mixed feeling about this book, however, because for some reason I really enjoyed reading it even though so much of it bugged me. Maybe Deborah Harkness put a spell on the book because that is pretty much the only explanation I can come up with.

Though I enjoyed the overall concept of a witch who wants nothing to do with witchcraft who gets violently thrown into that world, I felt that by the end the subplot romance becomes the total driving force for the story. This is fine if you're writing a romance, but I wasn't really wanting to read a romance when I picked up A Discovery of Witches. Also, I feel that though Harkness starts out writing a strong female character who can fully take care of herself, the second Matthew steps into the picture Diana becomes a major damsel in distress. On top of that, Matthew is basically a douche throughout ninety percent of the story, and Diana, after only a couple weeks of knowing him, is completely willing to choose him over her family at every instant. Matthew definitely falls into the stereotypical vampire role of obsession with a woman that turns into the need to posses her fully as if he owns her.  Honestly, I think in general I have issues with vampire romances because they make absolutely no sense unless ultimately the girl is going to become a vampire. If that is not the intention, there is going to come a point where you will look forty years older than your vampire husband. Do characters not take that into account before deciding they want to marry the living dead? On a completely different note, there were definitely some really cheesy lines that I literally laughed out loud at. I also wasn't to keen on the whole genetics side to the story where magical creatures have extra chromosomes, and you can tell what powers a which has based on her DNA. Even in a story about magical beings, this was a little too much of a stretch for me.

All of that being said, I flew through this book and really did enjoy the overall experience of it. Harkness made me care about the characters, and so I fully plan on reading the rest of the series. Maybe this makes me as bad as the twihards or maybe I've just been reading so many books recently that I'm not paying as much attention to writing as I am to the overall story or maybe ever since I first watched Buffy I've just really wanted to fall in love with a vampire, of this I am not sure. Whatever the reason, I definitely want to know what becomes of Diana and Matthew.

As far as family friendliness goes, this is definitely not a book for young teens. There is a decent amount cursing and some semi-graphic scenes both sexual ones and violent ones. I definitely would not let my young teen pick up this book.

My Rating: 5/10