• Author: Anne Rice
• ISBN: 9780345384461

I bought my copy of The Witching Hour well over a decade ago, and though I thought it was incredible back then, I wasn’t as thrilled by it the second read through.

Why?  It’s too long, and huge chunks of pages could have been cut.  It was repetitive.  Worst of all, quite a bit of the dialogue between the main characters, Rowan and Michael, felt contrived, forced, and unrealistic.  Sometimes it went as far as to make me think I was reading the script for a soap opera.  I didn’t feel their deep, unending love for each other.  Instead, I felt like gagging and rolling my eyes.  Hot, passionate sex after just meeting doesn’t equal true love forever.

While the rest of the story is classic Anne Rice, I think she got a bit out of her depth with the romance.  It would have been better if she stuck to what she knows: Horror, the supernatural and paranormal, and steamy sexual encounters.  I’m going to continue with the Lives of the Mayfair Witches trilogy since it becomes more about Lasher and an interesting twist on some Pagan mythology, but, had this been the first time I had read The Witching Hour, I would probably just stick with her Vampire Chronicles.