The initial promise of an academically fuelled supernatural suspense mystery kept me hooked, but it ultimately landed in a plot achingly similar to Twilight — despite the promises of witchcraft and magic, this book didn’t cast a spell over me.
SYNOPSIS: Deep in the stacks of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
I read this book a while ago, but I hadn’t the urge to properly review it until now. It’s been stewing in my mind for quite some time now, as I haven’t quite been able to let go
Pic from Goodreads.
of it — I think that, ultimately, this book let me down. It was actually a real tragedy, as the premise was fantastic. I have no idea how I stumbled upon this book, but I think it was through some sort of ‘Halloween-and-witch-books-you-should-read’ article on Bustle. Initially, I really liked the book. Until the Edward Cullens came barging into the plot, disbanding my enjoyment. Womp womp.
So, why didn’t I fall for the magic of this book? I could essentially boil it down to two reasons, which I’ll make clear below.
Spoiler alert: I did not like this book whatsoever.
SYNOPSIS: Darcy Barrett has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend. Despite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to her brother, 99%. That’s the problem with finding her dream man at age eight and peaking in her photography career at age twenty—ever since, she’s had to learn to settle for good enough.
Picture from Goodreads.
When Darcy and Jamie inherit a tumble-down cottage from their grandmother, they’re left with strict instructions to bring it back to its former glory and sell the property. Darcy plans to be in an aisle seat halfway across the ocean as soon as the renovations start, but before she can cut and run, she finds a familiar face on her porch: house-flipper extraordinaire Tom’s arrived, he’s bearing power tools, and he’s single for the first time in almost a decade.
Suddenly Darcy’s considering sticking around to make sure her twin doesn’t ruin the cottage’s inherent magic with his penchant for grey and chrome. She’s definitely not staying because of her new business partner’s tight t-shirts, or that perfect face that’s inspiring her to pick up her camera again. Soon sparks are flying—and it’s not the faulty wiring. It turns out one percent of Tom’s heart might not be enough for Darcy anymore. This time around, she’s switching things up. She’s going to make Tom Valeska 99 percent hers.
What the frack just happened. I needed to vent my emotions in a review after reading this. I have had no prior experience of Sally Thorne’s writing, but I have not been able to escape the millions of glowing reviews of ‘The Hating Game’ (her other book). This led me to believe that her newest romance-novel ’99 Percent Mine’ would be equally amazeballs as everyone made ‘The Hating Game’ out to be. BOY, was I wrong.
First of all, this book made me seriously doubt my English. Yes, it is not my native language, but the way this was written and structured … Miss Thorne had me thinking I was reading in another language. There were just so. many. sudden jumps in dialogue and explanations that left the reader reeling. I thought I was stupid, or tired, or just missing the point — but no. Every other paragraph was like metaphorically crossing a river, only you had no bridge and were swept violently away by currents and lost all sense of direction. That was the general structure of the book, IMO.
Secondly, the romance itself. Gah. I’m sorry, but Darcy and Tom just did not scream ‘OTP’ to me. The book had a good setup that might’ve been able to shoulder the suboptimal structure, but I thought the characters themselves were … strange. At first, I liked the badass, independent stuff Darcy had going — I was like alright, OK, I can get on board with this. Aaaand then 200 pages go by of her whining, and I’m like: ._.
I got where Thorne was heading with this character — or at least I think I do — but that was not where we ended up. At all. At any point in the book. Darcy turned into a whiny, wannabe strong- independent-woman character. This general personality enabled any and all actually believable strong-independent-woman-moments to feel more like she was being annoying and stubborn. Ouch.
And then Tom. I read another review who also had an issue with what they coined as the: ‘ 2008-brand of massive overprotectiveness these characters sported‘. I agree, wholeheartedly. I want to read about humans — people who can talk and think and reason about collective issues. Not glorified wolves who just grunt and howl and run around instead, because at times the book did really feel that way. The dialogue was choppy, there was a lot of angst that went in no direction, and then they were all fighting suddenly ? As the reader, you’re sitting there like: ?!!?!?!?!?!??!.
I will, however, still give it two stars because the cover is really, really pretty. It’s my bad for being a sucker for the aesthetics.
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