What’s on the TBR pile?

It’s been a long, long time since I read anything old.

I’m not talking about Great Expectations or Oliver Twist, although it has been a while since I’ve read either of those. I mean something I’ve already read before.

I’ve been so caught up reading new books that the old books that made their way back into the pipeline have been a bit abandoned. All the Harry Potters, several awesome books from my teenage years like Poison and The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. 

But recently, I’ve had a craving a particular trilogy that was the reading highlight of my late teens:

 

The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness

 

This trilogy is The Best.

Our main character is Diana Bishop, an American academic and closet witch working at Oxford University. When she accidentally withdraws a lost manuscript from the library, the entire supernatural community takes interest. Including charismatic vampire Matthew Clairmont.

This came out during the vampire-crazed era following Twilight and it’s a super sophisticated vampire romance urban fantasy. While the teen-meets-vampire and romance blossoms thing is still a fun read for me, it was awesome to get stuck into an urban fantasy with more mature characters.

This trilogy is made up of three books:

 

A Discovery of Witches

Shadow of Night

 

The Book of Life

 

The whole trilogy follows Diana and Matthew as they unravel the mystery of the long-missing manuscript and the power it grants. Trying to fend off the pursuit of supernatural leaders, they travel into the past. Oh yeah, this one is also a time travel. Probably another reason I love this series so much.

If you haven’t already seen the trailers or seen the first series yourself, A Discovery of Witches has been made for TV. Spoiler alert, it’s not great. I was so excited when they announced it and I wanted to love it so much, but it was a bit of a let down. I won’t go into the why – let’s focus on the books.

Talking about it makes me want to read it more and I really hope I can find the time to read it again. This series really left a mark and considering the number of books I’ve read, that’s saying something.

But even if I can’t, I really hope all of you get a chance to read these books because as far as I’m concerned, they really are the cream of the urban fantasy crop.

Where can you get it? This series is hugely popular so it’s available on all major platforms, but here’s the Amazon link to the whole trilogy in case you want to binge-read it. Spoiler alert: you probably will!

Thanks for reading!