Inside every girl there lies a secret Bella Swan or in this case a Diana Bishop. An old fragment left from childhood days watching damsels in distress on the Disney Channel being saved by the handsome, fearless, prince. It was that part of me that slightly enjoyed this book for a brief moment. That found enjoyment in the ridiculous love at first sight, I will destroy the world for you kind of relationship that transpired between Diana and Matthew. Unfortunately, it was short lived and the incredulities outweighed the weak charm of this book.
First, this book was a total rip off of twilight. So what? Hundreds of books are based on twilight. Yes, but this one is shameless!
List of Twilight Similarities
1. Most obvious of all: Taboo love between a vampire and a non vampire
2. The obsession with "smelling" things and giving the smells retarded descriptions. " You smell of willow sap. And chamomile that's been crushed underfoot."..... OKAY...
3. Sneaking into her room and watching her sleep.. like we haven't seen that before. #creepyasfuck
4. The Congregation, a.k.a the Volturi. The law keepers of the paranormal realm who are against Diana and Matthew's relationship and want to destroy them
5. The allusion to Diana and Matthew's future babies. Not 100% in line with twilights disturbing demonic baby clawing itself out of the mother, but still a taboo subject.
6. The love at first sight relationship and the following overprotective trope.
That wasn't even my main issue with the book. Since Harkness actually introduced an interesting accompanying story line re. Ashmole and the mysteries surrounding it. No, my issue was the silly character interaction and the over the top cheeseball descriptions. Examples:
Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested unobserved, waiting for him
But the most unnerving thing about him was not his physical perfection. It was his feral combination of strength, agility, and keen intelligence that was palpable across the room.
Easy there tiger.
He smiled. It was a small, polite smile that didn't reveal his teeth. I was intensely aware of them anyway, sitting in perfectly straight, sharp rows behind his pale lips.
I was so dumbfounded that I swore. Clairmont looked at me in shock, then chuckled.
Matthew's arms shot around me from behind, pressing my back against his chest so hard that I could feel every flexed muscle. 'Now,' he said directly into my ear, ' we're going to talk like civilized creatures about what happened. You are not running away from this- or from me.'
' Let me go Matthew.' I struggled in his arms.
'No.'
Gosh, this is not ok. Why do authors think this manhandling is sexy. I honestly think we will never progress as a society that respects women until we get rid of this misconception from our literature, films and lives! This is not sexy.... not at all. It's a sign of helplessness and abuse of physical strength. #saynotomanhandling
Let's talk about Matthew's mom, who despises humans because of what they did to her husband. The woman would kill a human on sight, she loathes them BUT somehow, after meeting Diana and initially hating her, TWO DAYS LATER, she's protecting her and treating her like her own daughter......
There were so many strange behaviors in this story, like Diana obsessing over her keynote speech THE WHOLE TIME while people were out to kill her.
"I was just almost tortured to death but hey I'm fine now! Let's think about my key note speech!"
Basically, it's a shallow paranormal romance that was written as twilight fan fiction. Did you absolutely love twilight and wish there was more novels in the series? LOOK NO FURTHER! Harkness got your back!
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