Name: Modern Divination
ISBN: 9798987321300

Isabel Agajanian

Aurelia Schwartz has spent twenty-three years maintaining the equilibrium between her carefully curated human life and the magical one that she endures in secret. With a devoted best friend and top marks at a prestigious university, she has everything one could possibly want neatly within her grasp.

Except, her gift of green magic has begun to fade, and if that wasn’t enough to upset the balance of her life, a fateful run-in with another power-hungry witch with a penchant for stolen magic has threatened to bring it all to ruin.

Cast into an unexpected alliance with her dreadfully arrogant classmate, Aurelia goes into hiding among a peculiar family of witches, where she discovers that the secret to their safety requires breaking rules she has followed all her life:
Make no promises,
Tell no one what you are,
and
Never stay the night.

Modern Divination #1

Modern Divination

easy read and cute moments but half the time I was kinda lost / not invested in the story!! 🥴🥲

Adele Etheridge Woodson

There are parts of this that really bothered me but I also liked it 😭

Mel 

Selin Igten

need to .. i need to .. i need to reread this and reread and reread once again this was so perfect it was amazing i cant even begin to describe … i loved it so much 

i love when books have main characters that are 22+ like i just love it… conversations between 2 leads were so mature and it was just so real like i swear .. omg

it was so good i cant lie it was a bit confusing at first cause i didn’t really understand aurora her magic? but it becomes clearer later on in the book!!! wish there was a liiiittle bit more worldbuilding! 

loved so so much about this book… what bothers me about new books is that they’re usually just… filled with smut and i cant lie i don’t love it!! just felt that this book was paced perfectly and just written extremely well and also loved the fact that the relationship between the 2 mains just build up gradually instead of them just instantly fucking and what not like every other new book

i fucking loved theo i cant even lie guys like he’s my crush i need him to be real and also of course loved aurora she’s me… 

“Time always seemed to be the issue for her. It moved too quickly to catch hold of and enjoy. It spurned her advances like an unrequited love. She was constantly out of it, or with too much of it dispersed between periods of sporadic business—in all cases, she was left wholly unsatisfied.”

read this and i just wow this was my book like wowww…

ALSOOO when rory said she loved the way he smelled and he said he wore the cologne for her… i cant breathe might’ve giggled a bit



okay anyways… ending was terrible i cant believe they’re not together… although i get why theo can’t leave lou like that… where’s gemma btw! 

need book 2 immediately 

 oke bye 

❤️

nina 

Hunty

3.5 stars rounded up

This book was very beautifully written - the prose transported me into one of the many ASMR ambience youtube videos I love to have on in the background. The characters felt very real and their development as individuals and as a couple kept me reading.

However, as the book was very character-driven, the actual plot of the book felt very much like a subplot in its own story. At times I felt like this would’ve been better off as a slice of life without the mystery/villain as it just wasn’t explored or explained enough. I understand wanting to show and not tell but the climax left me with a “that’s it?” feeling. I would have really enjoyed more exploration into who this villain was, what she wanted, and why she felt like this was the way to accomplish her goals. 

The romance was intriguing for me. Fantasy, or at least the fantasy I usually read, favors HEA endings and that is not what happened here. Aurelia and Teddy’s love blossoms slowly but deeply and left me hurting with them at the end when it seems to become a Right-Person-Wrong-Time sort of thing. I think there may be a second book coming out so it might alleviate some of this (Gemma’s storyline is certainly left wide open as well).

Overall, I feel this was a very strong debut. The author certainly has her voice and prose down but could benefit from a little more direction/editing plot wise.

to put it simply, there are some books that you only finish due to pure curiosity. i kept asking myself what the romance would look like near the end and it was enough to keep me going, but the writing style was def not my favourite. i'm also picky about my romances. the build-up, the dynamics and the degree of romance we end up seeing all matter to me. this book was slow and somehow fast all at once. why does the main character find herself attracted to the love interest in such an early chapter of the book, It feels rushed but more importantly not meaningful enough. especially because this is a "rival/enemies - lovers" trope. the characters most mentioned in the book are generally not very agreeable, it's odd to me that university students would act this childish. the world-building wasn't amazing but I do sort of like the attempt to tie in a "dark academia" aesthetic. so overall, i wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone who's picky.

Read it. I’ve never felt so much tension from a couple. 

Chelsea

Easily my favourite January read Modern Divination by Isabel Agajanian follows the academic green witch Aurelia Schwartz and the ever-secretive, turtleneck-wearing Theodore Ingram. It starts out as your usual academic rivals/ enemies trope and transitions beautifully into a fantastical necessary proximity/cohabitation story with small towns, a magic system I'd like to know more about and lots of birds...don't ask. The author writes with a quiet viciousness that is both entrancing and page-turning and I very much look forward to the next book in the series. I can't wait to see how they go about their relationship, I need my heart to settle.

Modern Divination Modern Divination #1

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