DNF Review: A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness

I decided to read this as part of my Bingo Chart Reading Challenge for the year, because it featured vampires. 

I have mixed feelings about this book. Obviously I have decided to DNF it, but I actually kind of enjoyed reading it. For the most part it had a good flow and interesting characters and I made it 500 pages in before I finally decided that my problems were larger than my enjoyment. The book is about 700 pages long, so I almost made it through and I debated whether to just push through and finish it. But in keeping with my attempt to DNF books I am not enjoying, despite my major FOMO, and due to the fact that this is the first book in a trilogy, I decided to call it quits!

The book is about Diana, a witch, who is currently at Oxford in England doing research on alchemy. Due to various events she has renounced her witchy powers and tries to lead a non-magical life. One day she receives a book from the library where she is studying, that turns out to be magical. She studies it for her research and sends it back. As it turns out this was a special book that every witch, demon and vampire wants to get their hands on, and they all think Diana can get it back for them. 

Below I will go into slightly more detail as to why I DNF’ed this book, so if you want to avoid spoilery bits, stop reading!

I had two major problems with this book; first, the plot pacing and second the relationship between Diana and Matthew. 

As for the plot, it was just too slow. The book was well written, which kept me interested for a loooong time and kept me reading, but ultimately the plot was just moving too slowly for me. It takes ages to find out what that book is and why it is so coveted. It also takes a good long while for us to find out why Diana doesn’t want to use her magic and even then her reasoning is not very sound, at least to me. Events later in the book sort of give a more reasonable explanation, but that was too little too late and led to more questions than it answered. We have a few short bursts of action, but mostly the plot consists of descriptions and conversations and people going to yoga or horseback riding or eating. As I said it was all very well written, but the pacing needed a lot of work. 

As for Diana’s relationship with Matthew it started out slightly creepy and continued to creep me out. As it turns out he is a vampire, and he is also after the book. This causes him to stalk Diana, breaking into her chambers, while she is sleeping and following her around, ostensibly protecting her, but really just being a creeper. Diana rather quickly succumbs to his vampire charms and they start a relationship, where he clearly expects to be the dominant one, and after a very few protests from Diana’s side, she lets him take over her life, basically, and decide when she does what. This is all hidden under a guise of him protecting her from others, who want to harm her and his vampire habits of controlling everything and everyone, but I couldn’t help feeling super uncomfortable with the way he took control of her life and she let him. His mother at some point says that Diana needs to let him be in control and subject herself to him, because he is the “alpha male” of the household…I thought the alpha male thing just related to werewolves. Besides it turns out that he has an older brother, who certainly views himself as the alpha of the family, so that doesn’t really make sense to me. All in all I was just super uncomfortable with the way he dominated her and took over her life, despite it being portrayed as the “loving boyfriend” who just wants to protect his lover. This is the same problem I have with a LOT of YA books, but I didn’t expect to find it in an adult novel. And eventually it was just too much for me and I decided to leave it be.