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What Members Thought
Diana Bishop is studying alchemy at Oxford when the appearance of an unexpected manuscript starts a whole mess of trouble. Most significantly, it leads to her path crossing with the mysterious Matthew Claremont, a well-known scholar in his own right. But Diana and Matthew are no mere humans -- she is a witch who refuses to use her magic unless absolutely necessary, and he is a vampire in search of their origins and the answer to why they may all soon be extinct. Their eventual partnership is eno
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People, please save me from myself; prevent me from ever again reading a soggy romance between incompatible supernaturals whose cliffhanger ending wrongly presumes I would ever want to come back and spend more time with these irritating numbskulls masquerading as preposterous academics.
I loved this book! I love when authors do a thorough job with their research, and then effortlessly merge the research with the narrative. There are just a handful of scenes where she falls into the "look how much I know" writing style, specifically one when she's describing a game of billiards, but that's a tiny thing. The characters are great, and I love how she has incorporated "monsters" into the human world. I cannot wait to read the second book.
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I FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK. I have complicated feelings about it because I really enjoyed it, I loved the history and mythology and descriptions of Oxford and the chateau. But it took me so long to read. It was hard to get absorbed in it to the point where I just have to read it until over halfway through, which is a long way for a 500+ page book.
I like the idea of the story behind this book but I really wrestled between hating it and loving it the whole time I was reading it, especially in the beginning. It's pretty elitist. Hopefully the next one will be less so as was the end of the book but we'll see. Difficult for me to rate.
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May 29, 2011
Janine
marked it as to-read
Jul 30, 2011
Maria
marked it as dnf-did-not-finish
Jan 13, 2015
Lisa Wyatt
marked it as to-read
Jun 01, 2017
Janelle
marked it as to-read
Jan 15, 2020
Jotong
marked it as to-read
Sep 29, 2020
Rachel
marked it as to-read
Jan 01, 2021
Tanya
added it
Jan 06, 2025
Christian
marked it as 2025
