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First off, let me say that this is not a "good" book, but I'm sticking with the 3-stars because, despite my better judgement, I did enjoy it, in a trashy kind of way. I mean, it's going on my "guilty pleasures" shelf for a reason.

So, now that that's out of the way...

The book opens well, introducing us to Diana the scholar, doing research on alchemy. While at the Bodleian library she calls back a particular book on alchemy which is locked by magic, and this starts the events of the book because every 'creature' - i.e. witches, vampires and daemons - want to get their hands on this book, which has been missing for bunches of years.

Why is it special? Why could Diana call it when no one else has been able to? Why are the other creatures interested in an alchemy book? Why is she being followed by a sexy vampire?

Duh duh DUH!

The problem is...

Well, the biggest problem is the editing. This book is WAAAAAAAAYYYYY too long for the content. I mean, we get this big diatribes about history and history books, which are interesting to a point, but then keep going. And we get all these descriptions about rowing, about food, about wine. (Funny how Diana becomes a wine connoisseur being able to taste particular herbs in a matter of hours. This makes more sense when you read the back cover and find that the author also has a famous wine blog, so, yeah, lots of needless descriptions of the tastes of certain wines... )

We also have the romance aspect, and this is the "trashy" part of the story which both frustrated/annoyed me, but also kind of kept me interested, because I'm a sucker.

Now, luckily, I knew going into this book that it was fairly heavy on the romance. If I had not known that, I probably would have rated the book lower...

Because a little less than halfway through the book, when Diana's life is being threatened, Matthew - ever controlling and alpha male (*eyeroll*) - whisks her off to be safe in France, and then we get this huge section just focusing on the "romance", and the wine, and the tea, and the food, and the more tea... and they're getting to know each other and developing the romance, except not really?

And oh dear gods, but this section could've been cut into ribbons. That said, I did like Ysabeau and Marte.

***Teeny bit spoilerish from this point on ***

It's also at this point where we introduce a secondary aspect of the story - deepening, in some ways, the conspiracies for the book, but also adding drama to the romance, because, you see, there's this Congregation which has these rules set down thousands of years ago and the 'creatures' aren't aloud to co-mingle...

If it sounds a bit like the Volturi, well, this isn't the only unfortunate way that this book is similar to Twilight - including Matthew watching Diana while she slept early on, Diana being annoyed, yet sort of turned on by, Matthew's controlling nature, and lots and lots and lots of talk, from both Diana and Matthew, about how the other smells (cloves and honey and whatever).

Harkness also tries to walk this line with the vampires making them both romanticized and dangerous. There's all this "I'm a dangerous predatory", "But you won't hurt me" stuff... which is, in fairness, fairly typical for PNR books between humans and vampires, so I guess there's that...

But Harkness does this whole "don't romanticize vampires" thing WHILE in the process of romanticizing them, so...

Anyway -

So, the Congregation steps in and gets involved, and now the witches are involved, and they want Diana not just for the book, but for her magic - because, of course, she's super-mega-ultra witch, she just doesn't want to/know how to use her powers - and shit goes down...

And then we're back in America and we spend a lot more time gathering forces, and drinking tea, and going for walks, and having nooky but not nooky because Matthew is weirdly opposed to them having sex (and, I thought it was going to be an 'until marriage' thing but even after they were 'married' still no penetration, but, apparently, everything else is ok. (Are we leading up to a bed breaking scene? Gods, I really hope not.)

And, anyway, so MAtthew and Diana have a plan, but before they can do the plan they need to sit down with their lawyer to figure out wills and shit... which I guess is super responsible, and, one on hand, it was nice to see people a bit forward thinking in these books, 'cause it's usually just "fly off half-cocked" all the time... But, on the other, slightly larger hand, I don't need 5 pages of lawyerly proceedings.

And that's the biggest issue with this book . Nothing gets described that doesn't get described in detail, and at length, and, often, repeatedly.

So...

The characters are kind of annoying, but I liked them, overall. The plot is all over the place and tries to be too many things at once, and pacing is terrible, with moments of suspense/excitement interspersed with ages of nothing happening... and it's kind of like The Historian meets Twilight, which I just find painful...

But, all that said, I still plowed through it fast enough.

So, ¯\_(�)_/¯

I'll be continuing the series.

Honestly, (view spoiler)[I knew there was time travel involved in this series, and I didn't expect to wait until the second book to actually get to it... (hide spoiler)]