Title: A Discovery of Witches

Author: Deborah Harkness

Publisher: Viking 2011

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 579

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges:  Women Authors; Finishing the Series; Dancing with Fantasy and Sci-Fi - Witches

Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

All Souls Trilogy:

• #1 A Discovery of Witches

• #2 Shadow of Night

• #3 The Book of Life

I enjoyed every page of this book! This reminds me of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Apparently, I really enjoy books that revolve around libraries, literature, and/or academic investigations. And of course, I fell for this book as soon as it was set at Oxford in the Bodlein Library. I was hooked! And then we get a good main heroine, although I must say she wasn’t my favorite from page one. But over the course of the book, I really come to like her and want to see the progress of her story. My favorite character is Matthew. This is a vampire done right. We get the allure and the charm and also the threat and the unworldly persona. I completely fell for Matthew within the first 10 pages of meeting him. As the novel progresses, we get to meet lots of other interesting characters (very intrigued by Satu and Marthe) and go on an epic adventure. I was predicting a horrid cliffhanger at the end of this book and it happened. But that’s okay, I waited to read this series after all the parts had been published. I can’t fit in the next book in April probably, but it’s on my list for May!

Next up on the TBR pile: