A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness 4/5 Stars
This book follows Diana Bishop, a witch with a long family history but one that she tries to shun due to the circumstances surrounding her parent’s death. She is an academic taking a sabbatical at Oxford when she encounters a spellbound book and can no longer avoid her use of magic. She also meets Matthew, a vampire, and fate keeps bringing them together no matter how much she tries to avoid him.
Overall I really liked this book. It was a fairly quick read because I read at every opportunity. One review I read described it as Harry Potter meets Twilight, and for the first half I completely disagreed. There was still no likening to Harry Potter by the end for me, but it did unfortunately take on an air of Twilight towards the end of the book. It’s a trilogy, and I feel that it’s one where I don’t have to read the next book, but I’m going to give it a shot and see if it Twilight aspects go away or lessen. A pretty good October read.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab 4/5 Stars
When Addie is 23 she makes a deal with the devil to live forever. The two stipulations are that he gets her soul when she’s done living and that no one will remember her, ever. People forget her when they leave the room or when one day turns into another. My main issue with this is that many times she mentions spending days with people but do they not go to the bathroom??
I spent most of the book frustrated with Schwab’s writing style and I have to say that this will probably be my last book if hers. I like her stories and ideas but the writing is very young-adult and too dramatic for me; lots and lots of line breaks for dramatic emphasis and repetitions of phrases such as “And yet” or starting five or more paragraphs with the same phrase, like “At some point…” These are not a problem on their own but when used as much as they are in this book (and much of her other writing) it becomes exhausting to be expected to be keyed up like an emotional teenager for almost 500 pages.
Writing style aside, this story is great. It is a unique and refreshing tale and I think anyone who either enjoys or can get over the writing style will like it.