Reviews with content warning for Sexism - A Discovery of Witches

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

12 reviews

abby_can_read's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

📖
I went back and forth on what I wanted to rate this. I have mixed feeling about this book.

Based on the blurb, I was excited. I thought this sounded great. I think this book had a great start and based on the summary, I knew the love story of Diana and Matthew was coming. I liked that Diana was older and she had life experience before meeting Matthew and them getting involved.

I started to lose interested around the time Matthew watched her sleeping, but I stuck with the book. I lost more interest as the relationship between Diana and Matthew developed.

I went into this book hoping it was a more mature and developed version of Twilight -- mainly featuring a better female character and a better romance. I don't think I had unreasonable hopes/expectations. But neither of those panned out for me.

The plot wasn't horrible, though I found to be predictable. The writing style was okay. The characters, mainly Diana, had me going back and forth and I still can't really decide how I feel beyond I think they were flat and some of the character development went backwards. I'm not really sure what I think about the relationships, mainly the one between Matthew and Diana. I can't decide if it's better or worse than Edward and Bella.

Despite my mixed feelings, overall I did enjoy reading this book. I plan to read the sequel. I have low exceptions and I'm curious how this series will compare to Twilight.

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annaroles's review

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lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

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ruthee's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Unlike others, I didn’t actually mine the pace or world-building…but the abusive relationship (red flag, after red flag, after red flag) framed as ‘that’s just the way vampires are, and my love is enough’ was so bad it just kept taking me out of the story.

It’s not often (if ever) that I completely prefer a tv or film adaptation to the original material, but in this case, my love of the tv series was what got me through this.

In audiobook, the narrator was good, except when it came to any accent that wasn’t their own. The English/Scottish/Australian ones ranged between literally lol to offensive…so strange for a professionally produced book.

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clarabooksit's review

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I hated this. The writing and story are cheesy, soapy, and cringey. The absolute worst thing about it, though, is the romance: Matthew is controlling and creepy, has anger issues, and treats Diana like a stupid child, and they fall in love to the point of desperation in only three weeks.

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alishamegan's review

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I hate Matthew. Super typical arrogant forceful aggressive male hetero love interest and literally a self admitted abuser and killer of women lol. I really don't like how he treats the female MC (which is super controlling and possessive). He is so one dimensional and the female MC has no personality tbh. Super disappointed.

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bookishchef's review

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

This book is like Twilight.
But without the love triangle.
And somehow even more toxic.

You thought Edward stalking Bella was creepy?
Meet Matthew Clermont! He is actually mentally and physically abusive to our bland Mary Sue protagonist named Diana.

If you're Matthew, life is easy.

Diana has a panic attack? Threaten her life.
Diana is feeling scared? Threaten her life.
Diana is feeling horny? Threaten her life.

Why? Because you just cannot help yourself of course. After all, it is sooooo hot when men treat women like

A. fragile objects they're supposed to control and protect.
B. things to literally kill.

This book perpetrates the idea that men cannot help themselves from abusing, controling, and commanding women.
Worst thing is, that every time Diana goes against Matthew's wishes, she is immediately punished by the plot. Which only confirms that women are supposed to listen to the men in their lives according to this book.

I have no clue how I, the reader, was supposed to find any of this romantic. All of the scenes were either highly uncomfortable or straight up abusive.

The excuse of "he just can't help himself" is as old as time and has been used time and time again to excuse shitty behaviour from men.
And Diana, the MC, decides that this excuse is not an excuse at all. She seems to think this is actually the way the world works. She doesn't even take the horrible "I can fix him" attitude that so many romance MCs take. Instead she just completely accepts Matthew as the toxic asshole he is and gives up every part of her life to listen to him and conform to his ideas of an ideal wife.

So yeah this book stole the toxicity from Twilight and made it 10x worse.

You know what else it stole?

THE WEIRD BABY PLOTLINE

Yup, you heard me correctly.
This author really looked at Renesmee and went "wow that's such a cool plot point".
Remember how Bella wasn't supposed to be able to get pregnant because Ed was a vampire? Well, same goes for Diana in this story. For a solid 80% of the book, we hear nothing about pregnancy rates between witches and vampires. (Diana is a witch and Matthew is a vampire)

Matthew refuses to have penetrative sex because of *plot*, and Diana gets frustrated because of this. And then suddenly out of NOWHERE it is revealed that witches and vampires can't have babies together BUT Diana has *special* DNA which means she is able to conceive with Matthew. Matthew supposedly didn't know this, so his aversion to penetrative sex was completely unrelated.
Even so, this entire plotpoint seems to exist to make Matthew right once again, and to rip off Twilight.

Truly do not understand why this gets 4+ stars on Goodreads.

ALSO OMG WINE GETS MENTIONED MORE THAN THE MC'S NAME I STG

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stwriter92's review

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Let me start off by saying that I did not like this book. At all.

A Discovery of Witches centers on the story of a very powerful witch who doesn't understand her own powers and has an enormous destiny dropped on her like a ton of bricks. She falls in love with a vampire, which is extremely taboo. Oh, and she has exclusive access to a very important book. If the synopsis I am giving seems sloppy, it's because the organization of the above mentioned parts were sloppily slapped together into something that vaguely resembled a plot if you squinted hard enough. The entire thing read like a bad Twilight fanfiction for adults. I already don't like Twilight (don't come for me), so this was just annoying as all hell.

I am usually a fan of books that weave together the threads of different storylines. I loved the way this was done in books I have read and reviewed in the past such as The Golem and the Jinni, The Lord of the Rings, and The Priory of the Orange Tree. However, unlike these books, the threads that "wove" this story together started to fray at the edges after the first stitch. This is probably because the threads themselves were not substantial enough to carry the story forward.

I found the two protagonists to be incredibly dull, insufferable, and selfish. I couldn't find a single thing I liked about either of them. Both Diana and Matthew were the most annoying characters I have read in recent times. Nothing about them made me feel sympathetic towards them or their "plight." They seemed to put the love they had above everyone else, oftentimes dragging unwilling participants into a game that should have ended as soon as it had started. The relationship between them is incredibly toxic, with Matthew being over-controlling and overbearing and Diana enabling him by being very "deer in the headlights." Matthew is absolutely dripping with red flags. He has an uncontrollable temper and constantly exerts his strength over Diana to control her. For example, early on in the book, they get into an argument. When Diana tries to leave, the following scene ensues:

"Let me go, Matthew," I struggled in his arms.
"No"
No man had ever refused when I asked him to stop doing something---whether it was blowing his nose in the library or trying to slip a hand up my shirt after a movie. I struggled again. Matthew's arms got tighter.
"Stop fighting me," he sounded amused. "You'll get tired long before I do, I assure you." (p. 191).

He will often talk to her as if she's a defenseless, naive child that he needs to take care of, which also puts a horrible taste in my mouth. On top of that, he drops this gem on her: "I will kill you myself before I let anyone hurt you" (p. 281). How, how, how does that make sense? God, I hate over-possessive love interests. Oh, and did I mention that he watches her sleep? The ick levels are high with this one. On top of this, he keeps so many secrets from her! At some point, they have the "no more secrets" conversation, but he still continues to keep secrets from her. And she just lets him!

Diana isn't a gem, either. Matthew calls her "ma lionne," but I think "mon oiseau" or even "mon ver" would have been more appropriate. There is nothing really courageous about her. She runs away from everything and only does whatever her own selfish heart wants. She pretends to care about other characters, but will side with Matthew the minute things get ugly. When other characters try to make her see the way her and Matthew's actions affect those around them, she refuses to take accountability for anything and refuses to allow any blame to be put on Matthew either. In her eyes, everyone else is wrong. I noticed this throughout, but there's a part where Matthew's mother, Ysabeau (who I love so, so, so much) tries to convince Diana to think twice before choosing to be with Matthew.

"This is not a game, Diana! Matthew would willingly turn his back on creatures he has known for centuries to protect your right to be whatever you imagine you want to be in your fleeting life. I'm begging you not to let him do it. They will kill him if he persists."
"He's his own man, Ysabeau," I said coldly. "I don't tell Matthew what to do" (p. 276)

Did I mention that the Very Important Book that this is supposed to be about ends up being super irrelevant? I would expect that a book that everyone wants to get their hands on would be put in a place of higher importance than the toxic romance between an overbearing vampire and a very boring witch. But I guess I was wrong!

I really only enjoyed the side characters in this book. I loved Hamish, Sarah, Em, Marcus, Miriam, and (when they appeared in the last few chapters) Nathaniel and Sophie. Not to mention, I adored Ysabeau and Marthe to death. If the story was written about these characters instead of about Diana and Matthew, I think I would have enjoyed it more.

This is one of the few times I will not be continuing a series. Usually I try to push through to see if the story gets better, but I am so uninterested and turned off by the mere thought of having to read about Matthew and Diana pretend to care about other people in two more books. No thank you.

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