Book Review: The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book can be a mixture of cozy meets drama meets EMOTIONAL DAMAGE meets thriller in this book. It is the trilogy’s last book, and it was a RIDE. This book had me going through so much emotional damage that I had to take a break sometimes and read something else. But I enjoyed reading about Diana, and I’m sad that this book and this trilogy is over. I wish we could get more books about Diana and the others, but this felt like a perfect ending to a really good series that I love, coming second to the Raven Cycle series.

The book is basically about everyone trying to find the Ashmole 782 and putting the missing pages back into the book-the pages they have, and the pages the daemon Edward Kelley had ripped out years ago. It turns out that this book was made from the body and bones from dead vampires, witches and daemons themselves, along with their blood. It does have action in it from the vampire stalker Benjamin, who is also Matthew’s son, who is very disgusting and triggering. He wants the book and Diana himself, so she can give him children (ha ha, no). But at the same time, Diana is pregnant with twins, and once they were born she was very protective of them (Matthew was too).

It also introduced some new characters, like Benjamin, Fernando, the London coven and Baldwin, Matthew’s brother. Baldwin did get on my last nerve with all his postering and all that, but he actually made some sense somehow. This book also reintroduces Jack Blackfrair, the boy from Shadow of Night. He’s now a vampire, but he also have the blood rage disease that Matthew and Benjamin have, and each time everyone touches him or get near, he’ll snap. But thanks to the motherly love of Diana and Matthew, he’s trying to beat it, even though Benjamin was the one that drove him to the blood rage.

There was a sad scene in the book where Diana and Matthew had to split up so Matthew can take care of Marcus’s children in New Orleans, and she deals with the book back home. Then when she finally finds the book, that’s when the book turned her into a walking palimpest. And then at then end, we have to deal with Benjamin and Peter Knox, who happily tricked Matthew and tortured him so badly and starved and poisoned him to death (which I had to stop because it was so triggering a bit). Then Diana and the others came up with a plan to stop Benjamin and Peter Knox, with Diana weaving a trap while she let Peter run his mouth.

But before she went and tried to save Matthew, she went to the Congregation to get him. At first, Domenico and Gerbert and Satu didn’t want nothing to do with it, worrying about everything else other than what they were there to talk about. But at the end, Diana got what she wanted, and she took down Benjamin and Peter, and is now part of the Congregation and is also a professor again. Matthew is at home with the twins, Philip and Rebecca, while he is healing up from his trauma, and that’s how the book ends. I really enjoyed reading this book, cannot wait to read more from her.

View all my reviews