Book Review - Discovery of Witches

I'm happy to say we had another absolutely wonderful book club this month. This month's book selection was The Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. We all loved the book from start to finish, before we even got together we were all commenting how excited we were to talk about the book. In honor of the author who is a self proclaimed oenophile we decided to meet at a local wine bar, called Zinburger (Wine and Burgers). The author Deborah Harkness is a wine lover and even writes her own award winning wine blog!

We had such a fabulous dinner, enjoying our wine and conversation!  It was also Wine Wednesdays, which meant half price bottles of wine so we indulged in a $40 bottle of pinot noir and enjoyed our burgers while talking about vampires and witches. The zucchini fries were also particularly delicious. And to top it off the restaurant was right next to a frozen yogurt place, it could not have been a more perfect book club night, that was the best night cap.

I'm so excited that we've been able to keep our little club get togethers going strong for 5 months now and we already have so many future books planned out to look forward to as well. For next month we agreed to read Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, although it's not really my type of book, part of the fun of the book club is to read books you normally would not read, who knows maybe I will get a kick out of it. And we will be making this another dinner and movie night since the movie comes out next month as well.

Also of note to look forward to is the next book in the All Souls Trilogy (aka Part II of the Discovery of Witches). We also found out that the author is going to be in the city doing a book signing for the release at Barnes and Noble, a visit to the city might be in order for July's get together!!! For August of course we will be discussing the new book. And we already have December and January to look forward to, I want to read the Great Gatsby again in honor of the new movie and Nicole wants us to read The Hobbit, also in honor of the movie, so lots of books and movies to look forward to in our future!!!

Now onto my book review....

Book Title: The Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Book Summary from Amazon: It all begins with a lost manuscript, a reluctant witch, and 1,500-year-old vampire. Dr. Diana Bishop has a really good reason for refusing to do magic: she is a direct descendant of the first woman executed in the Salem Witch Trials, and her parents cautioned her be discreet about her talents before they were murdered, presumably for having "too much power." So it is purely by accident that Diana unlocks an enchanted long-lost manuscript (a book that all manner of supernatural creatures believe to hold the story of all origins and the secret of immortality) at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and finds herself in a race to prevent an interspecies war. A sparkling debut written by a historian and self-proclaimed oenophile, A Discovery of Witches is heady mix of history and magic, mythology and love (cue the aforementioned vampire!), making for a luxurious, intoxicating, one-sitting read.

Did you like the book: Yes. I loved how what I thought was going to be a simple story line that you thought you knew early on what was going to happen turned out to be so much more. I loved how the author would give you small pieces of information and then later tie them together into such bigger issues. There were def a couple of times when I was reading it and I was like "that makes so much sense" and it all came together. The book was long page wise but I read the last 300 pages so fast, it really picked up a lot at the end. And of course it really leaves you hanging right at the end for what the next adventure will be, it was the perfect place to end, and there were several items that happened in this book that will be sure to become larger issues in the next two books. I can't wait to see how they unfold.

Would you recommend this book to another person: Yes absolutely. I already plan to loan the book out to anyone that is interested. For my friends that enjoyed Twilight this was even better, it was a more adult tale intertwined with historical fiction and much more vivid scenery. The characters were much more developed and had such interesting histories and back stories. The history of the characters and the scenery played such an important part of the book, it was fantastic to imagine all of the beautiful scenery in Oxford as well as the French country castles and more. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the trilogy!