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Modern Divination

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.

Genres FantasyRomanceAdultWitchesUrban FantasyParanormalFantasy Romance

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2023

About the author

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If you like to read about academic rivals, read this book
If you’re a winter person, read this book
If you rewatch Gilmore Girls and Supernatural every year, read this book
If you like cozy secluded settings, read this book
If you want magic and mystery but to focus mostly on the characters, read this book

Only one thing she was certain of: that Theodore Ingram had answers hidden somewhere behind his inky black veil of secrecy, and she would open him up to find them, piece by piece, even if it meant pulling him apart.

This originally came into my TBR because of the modern-corpse-bride look of the cover; the synopsis made it move to my 5-star-prediction list.

My Obligatory Taylor Swift Playlist:

-The Archer
-Anti-hero
-cowboy like me
-peace
-Snow on the Beach

“Can we pretend a little longer?” she whispered.
“If you want. Just until it’s real.”

Eat up babies, new Howl-coded love interest just dropped!

Thank you so much to the author for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

His heartbeat leapt under her palm; and she was Icarus, unwinding as he held her to his chest. How far would she go until it was too late? Until enough of her had melted off that she could no longer be reshaped. Just burn me, she thought. Let both our wings be damaged.

MODERN DIVINATION is a haunting fantasy romance featuring a dark academia backdrop, a witchy mystery, a rivals-to-lovers slow burn, and a magical bookstore I would give my soul to visit.

Rivalry, like love, required some measure of possession.

More than anything, MODERN DIVINATION is absolutely dripping with atmosphere. The prose lifts off the paper like mist, lingering in your mind long after putting the book down. Agajanian conjures a vivid, precise tonal setting that allows the book itself to feel precious and mystical. It's a tale you easily get lost in, as you forget about the world beyond the one at your fingertips, instead imagining yourself amongst the patter of rain on cobblestone, with warmth radiating from a mug of tea coddled between your palms, and the smell of lavender and petrichor just wafting beneath your nose. I found myself creating entire settings in which to read, wanting to replicate the sensory experience: surrounding myself with lit candles, putting on a curated playlist, and certainly never without a cozy drink. (I highly recommend a london fog or mint chocolate tea!)

There were many burned bridges behind her, but she made a point never to look back at them, because she thought it would hurt — like a wound beneath stitches, still tender and raw. Like Orpheus damning Eurydice with his affection.

This is certainly a very character-driven story, and these characters are brilliantly raw and messy and relatable to a fellow floundering and emotionally guarded 23-year-old. I couldn't help but see myself in their hopes and in their fears. Even the times they are solidly in the wrong or delusionally crafting their own misery, I found them easy to understand and connect with. Aurelia is so wonderfully stubborn and dense and a fantastic character to carry us on this journey. Her development is so rich and her perspective is so fabulously flawed. I think everyone who has had to fight and claw their way forward in life will really see themselves in her. And though it isn't a major part of the story, I do feel as though I have to mention that she's Jewish, which of course, won her some points with me. And Teddy is SUCH a delicious love interest. I'm literally gay and yet. he's my new book boyfriend. He's so broody and whimsical, and such a haunted little bird boy. I'm desperate for more of his POV in the second book.

You’d be surprised by all the things that scare me.” “Like what?” “You. You terrify me. And torture me a bit too.”

And the romance was heart-wrenching, poetic, and timeless. Teddy and Aurelia mirror each other and play off their similarities, finding moments of contention and attraction in tandem. It was such a joy getting to watch them learn to take down their walls, bit by bit, and learn to look at each other a little deeper. I loved the way that they grow throughout the text, not just individually, but together. They bring about each other's growth through their poking and prodding and yet also through their love for each other. Their chemistry (and their banter. ) are absolutely unparalleled. The Icarus metaphor absolutely gutted me like a fish.

“You say that like your affection is a rotten thing,” he said. Aurelia shrugged. “Because it is. Mine is. Like you said, it’s all diluted.” And it’s just you I’m rotten with.

I will say, this book had a slow start, and for probably about the first half, I felt that at times the prose got so tangled in its beauty it lost a bit of clarity. (It sadly was most definitely overworked.) But at some point along the way, it just hit its stride and balanced itself out and all of that fell away to blossom into a gorgeous piece of storytelling. And especially for an indie debut, a slow start is nothing to hold back my praise. It's been a while since I've been so entranced into a book that it forces me to stay up past my bedtime, but I had to stay up til 2:30 AM because I refused to rip myself from the clutches of this story. Even writing up this review, my fingers are itching to return to this book's pages and to fill its margins with annotations, unravelling the strings of Agajanian's narrative brilliance. And even more, I cannot wait for book 2.

To love something was to deface it—to give it a mark and change its identity forever.

MODERN DIVINATION is for the tea lovers, the Howl's Moving Castle girlies, the readers who annotate their books into oblivion, the romantics with trust issues, the underestimated academics, the purple-prose lovers, the gays, and anyone looking for a book to cuddle up with on a blustering winter night.

CW: violence, murder, blood & gore, injury detail, dead body, bullying, loss of loved one, grief, limb loss, abusive parent, sexual content, emesis

Review: Modern Divination by Isabel Agajanian

⁣Modern Divination is a new adult contemporary fantasy that partially takes place at Cambridge University. It follows two main characters: Aurelia Schwartz, a witch from the US, and Theodore Ingram, her fellow student and rival. When another witch is murdered, Aurelia is pulled into the murder mystery and finds herself teaming up with Teddy.

Things I Liked:

• This book is very atmospheric, which is a trait I always love!
• I also loved the witchy aesthetic. Aurelia, as a green witch, cultivates plants, and I enjoyed when she worked her magic.
• Tea vibes! Since it’s set in England, there’s plenty brewing of tea and talk about tea.
• Teddy has strong Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle vibes.
• I really enjoyed the style of dialogue and the deep conversations between Aurelia and Teddy.
• In the same vein, I enjoyed the overall writing style.
• There’s also Jewish, bisexual, and nonbinary representation.

Things I Didn’t Like As Much:

• ⁣The plot itself is very minimal. I love a good murder mystery and was expecting it to take up more of the story. However, this is a very character-driven and introspective story, and the plot is left on the very back burner. I also found the actual plot itself to be lackluster, and the villain to be flat and uninteresting, unfortunately.
• Sections of the story are confusing. I felt like I needed to reread explanations because I was constantly double-guessing what I knew and didn’t know. Some of the transitions between chapters were also a little unclear, and I had to reread them for clarity’s sake.
• Lastly, the magic system could have been explored more. There were some revelations at the end of the book that fell flat for me because I didn’t feel like I knew the magic system well enough.

Overall, I did really enjoy the focus on the characters. Both Aurelia and Teddy are well-rounded and have plenty of flaws, and Aurelia’s friendship with her flatmate/best friend, Ryan, is written well. However, I wish the story was clearer and had a bit of a stronger plot.

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