Trilogies! Doesn't anyone write a stand alone popular novel anymore? Okay, you can sense I'm a little bitter. I do like trilogies, I do. But I started this novel, thinking it was a 600 page novel with a beginning, middle and end. Around page 550, I began worrying that the wrap-up was going to be a bit abrupt...just to be left totally hanging.
Sigh.
A Discovery of Witches is a romance- unadulterated, unapologetic romance and in the extremely trendy vein of Vampire lit. It is about a romance between a witch and a vamp. It is fun and except for a few pages in about the middle, essentially a clean enough romance for the teen set. Unfortunate that there had to be some descriptive hot-and-heavy in the middle, it means it falls short of a recommendation from me. Exclusion due to the "Eye of the Needle" rule. Remember The Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett? I read that book back as an impressionable teen, and it was a dead-on spy novel, except for a few really randy pages in the middle that left too little to my imagination.
Thus, I cannot recommend it for the teen reader and lover of romance despite it's otherwise appealing tale. I bristle a bit at the idea of "romance" in the novel, as it doesn't apply to real romance, not a bit. Women somehow love the idea, in concept, of a strong man, willing to protect us, shield us, love us vulnerably and unconditionally. In reality, I'm not much for the possessive or bossy type. So, as a novel for a woman happily married to a man who is neither jealous, nor possessive- and gets reminded of who he married when he gets bossy- it is a fine piece of junk food. For a teen girl, who is still getting an idea of what is healthful romance...maybe not.
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