2.5 stars
This book (I was surprised to see) was the local library's book club choice for October [because witches = Halloween-y]. It'd been on my TBR since 2012, and so I took the plunge. I'd heard somewhat glowing reviews previously, and had admittedly high expectations. So here's my take:


- Yes, I liked it, generally. Maybe enough to continue the series, but I also had a bunch of problems with it too.
- For much of this book all I could see were parallels to Twilight, which I included in my updates. But this was pretty much all I could focus on and made it feel like a rip-off.
- Both Matthew and Diana are too perfect? They're both described as super attractive and are both crazy smart and awesome. Was annoying to me.
- The system of creatures seems very weak on the daemon side--I really hope more of that is fleshed out in later books, because other than 'artistic genius' there seems to be nothing special about these creatures, and I'd think that they wouldn't have a hard time blending in with humans the way witches and vampires do.
- Matthew and Diana have insta-love, and it's entirely all-consuming and was not particularly sexy to me. This was basically the first 50% of the plot: they meet and develop feelings for each other... for unclear reasons to me. I would have loved for this to be a slow burn with better development.
- Diana is told over and over by people throughout the book how she and Matthew are destined and can't be apart and she must choose him, and this got annoying and I would have much preferred some wavering on her part (like when Satu tried to plant doubt, or any of the literally dozen+ times that Diana realizes that Matthew has lied to her/kept information from her).
- Matthew is told at the beginning by Hamish that to get/keep Diana he will have to not lie to her or keep information from her, and yet that IS ALL HE DOES FOR THE WHOLE BOOK. IS NOT TELL HER STUFF.
- I get that Matthew is a territorial and protective vampire, but his over-protectiveness became a serious annoyance. Diana mostly rolls with it and manages to sometimes walk the line of misbehaving [50 shades much?] because he loves her and is indulgent.
- Diana's magic. **sigh** So she's super traumatized after her parents are murdered, okay. And she decides to turn her back on magic and tries to live a more human life, sure. This is a convenient way to introduce the reader to the world of magic: it's new to both reader and to Diana and she has a lot of information being thrown at her/us.
But JEEZ, she has to be 'the super special chosen one'?? She has to have all the genes for all the different kinds of magic? Okay, fine, I'm used to the main character being the super special one. But she can't control her powers because she didn't learn how to do it and also she can't use her magic "unless she needs to" but she can do it a few times a year, and use magic to do things like fetch a book that's out of reach? When she's being physically threatened/in danger--that's when a surge of protective magic makes a lot of sense. But then when she has this whole scene of opening her third eye and can track Matthew in the woods and fly around...?? So how is that a need? And later she can timewalk no problem?? Em encourages her to 'use her magic, from the heart' when learning to timewalk--is this genetic trait supposed to be exempt from the spell magic that's included in the spell binding?? I know this is a book and fictional, but the magic to me felt like it didn't follow rules that the author laid out.
And I feel suspicious because it seems like Matthew knows too much about Diana's abilities/magic--I know he's been around for 1500 years but the witches implied that they were very secret about their magic. Also Ysabeau and Marthe knew a lot too...
- The blend of magic and science was interesting, and honestly I liked that there was as much science because I had a much easier time swallowing the "lore" of the book with some pseudoscience to back it up.
- I felt that there were a lot of quotes in this book, and I have a both a terrible memory for quotes and also have not read most of what was being quoted, so I don't know how many of these quotes are legit versus fictional, but this was an interesting element that lent both a pretentious and a learned feel to the writing. Frequently some obscure quote in old English sounds more romantic and profound than perhaps it did at the time, or really is. But those were fun to read, if a bit over-used.