Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sending me this ARC.

From the first pages I was hooked on the story.
When I read the summary I thought it was going to be a fantasy with high stakes and lots of action but although there were big stakes, the pace was relatively slow and there wasn't as much action as I imagined. However I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the book which is cozy, dark academia and the pace of the book. In addition, I was able to appreciate thanks to this pace the evolution of the relationship between the 2 protagonists and am intrigued to see their evolution in the second volume. Besides the impression that the book could have been a little shorter, I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to read the second one.

After a bit of a slow start, I struggled to put this book down. I liked the characters, the way they developed throughout and the general gist of the story and the world it was set in.

I was completely sold on this book when I read it was a dark academia fantasy with witches. This was a slow burn, mostly character-driven romance with a splash of fantasy (enter witches and magic). While the start of the book set in Cambridge, the majority of the action isn't there.
I absolutely loved the characters - Aurelia and Ingram - and I loved their relationship!!!
I read the book (thank you Pan Macmillan for sending the physical copy my way!!!) while listening to the audiobook and I think it made total diference in the story.
I was intrigued and couldn't stop reading to learn more about this story, the characters and what was happening. However, I felt that the action of the book was a bit on the slower pace. But it made for the amazing and well developed characters.
Modern Divination felt cosy and very cottage core, winter vibes. I'm rating this 3.5 stars.
I'm still very much intrigued to read the second book in the series!!!

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for ARC and ALC.

This book had so much to love. It was cozy, atmospheric. There was magic and romance. It was set in a contemporary world which is one of my favorite things. I really loved this book so much.

This is the second time i’ve read this book now. I originally read it in 2023 when it was self published and it just didn’t click with me (ended up giving it two stars), when I found it was getting trad published I decided to give it another go & I am so glad I did. I don't know if it was the timing or the revised edition but I really enjoyed myself the second time round.

I wholeheartedly adore Teddy & Rory, they are both nerdy messes in their own way. The prose of this book was absolutely stunning, everything was gothic and witchy but it also had such a cosy feel to it. It is a very character driven book which I really enjoyed, I loved seeing Rory grow as a character and learn to explore her magic and her emotions more.

The found family aspect was done so right, I loved all the characters in this book and I am desperate to see more of them. This book to me felt very inclusive and it made me feel so safe. I truly love these characters.

I am so grateful I was given the opportunity to try this book again at the right time. I am also beyond excited for book 2, please & when!!

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

Modern Divination has a lot of potential, and I'm sure will be a new favourite for many people.

The characters of Aurelia and Teddy are interesting, and I enjoyed getting to learn more about them as the story went on. The style of prose is one that I think people who enjoy The Night Circus will also really love.

I did really struggle with the pacing of this novel, and very little happens for the first 350 pages. This makes the ending feel quite rushed, but there is also a feeling of it dragging out with the lack of resolution for many of story threads- which I'm sure will be picked up in the sequel. I think this particular book could've been a bit shorter and the pacing evened out across the whole story.

While I'm not personally a fan of novels which focus so heavily on building atmosphere rather than plot, I know this will appeal to many and especially those who enjoy stories like the Night Circus or The Starless Sea.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

I feel like lately lots of books are labelled as “academic rivals” but not many are done in the right way. Well this book is one of the best one with that trope I’ve read so far.

With a dark academia setting and a prose writing style this book is very well done. And tue characters actually stay rivals even if feelings are involved in the end. Which I totally loved !

Now let me start by saying that it might appear a bit slow at the beginning but from around 30% in, the story gets super interesting and you are just super invested in it.

I loved how Aurelia and Theodore keep challenge eachothers during the entirety of the book. They always want to do better and they are scared of what they feel for each other and what it means for their future in academia.
Like they know eachothers super well but they don’t just give everything up for love. And I loved that how until the very end he keeps talking about academia with her and how he knows it’s not the end but also not the right time for them.

A really great book! Perfect if you love academic rivalries with a slow burn romance. I loved the atmosphere that was created and found it quite a cozy yet haunting fantasy.

This book is stunningly written; the prose is beautiful and well-considered. The atmosphere, from the rainy days at Cambridge to the warmth of Gemma's home and more are palpable. I could have gotten lost in the world Isabel has written alone. Where it lost me a little was the flow of the story. We start with an intriguing beginning and then we get a little lost in the middle.

Our main characters are rivals, but really, it is Aurelia's stubbornness and dislike of Fredrick for being richer than she is. He made a less-than-stellar comment about her to a friend in a private conversation that she overheard, and she has hated him ever since. Fredrick, for his part, is mostly confused because he'd forgotten the conversation happened. Aurelia is insecure, and it bleeds through the writing and occasionally makes her unlikeable. He apologises when she tells him, and honestly is more concerned with keeping them both alive than any rivalry, unlike Aurelia, who only really calms once she starts to see him as a human rather than a concept. She gets better, and by the end, I was pleased with their conclusion, even if everyone else's was a bit blurry.

Fantastic book, and I hope to see more from this author.

I was excited to read this book which has been likened to A Discovery of Witches and hailed as Dark Academia.

The author has a beautiful grasp of the English language. The sentence structure and vocabulary are impressive. However, just about every sentence is very long winded which makes the book quite exhausting to read and tricky to follow.

I think the characters are ideal rivals to lovers, tortured souls, fantasy characters. However, personally I found them quite teenage angsty which given their age was a bit annoying. It was difficult to get to know the characters. I felt thrown into the middle of everything with no background or scene setting.

Given that scene setting wasn’t really a focus this book was a struggle for me. I love vividly described settings and felt I couldn’t fully imagine what was going on or where anything was happening.

There are some exciting moments in the book but they seem to just happen out of nowhere. I found the plot a bit lacking. There were some great ideas but they didn’t seem to develop. The climax near the end felt rushed and then brushed under the carpet. Overall the whole book felt very chaotic to me but I’m sure others may enjoy the frenetic nature of it.

My advice would be to read the reviews carefully. Many people do love this book and you may well be one of them. However, many also share similar opinions to mine. You should be able to judge from the reviews which camp you will fall into.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am very grateful to have received it but sadly this one wasn’t for me.

3.5 Stars. Academic rivals to lovers with witches - a great story. I enjoyed the relationship between the characters but felt as if there was too much time spent on this so that the plot felt secondary and rushed in parts.

I had high hopes, but unfortunately, this book didn’t live up to its intriguing premise. The story feels like an amalgam of ideas with little to anchor the reader in its world. The lack of exposition makes it difficult to connect with the characters or understand the rules of the magical system. I felt thrown into the middle of Aurelia's life without enough context to care about her struggles, and the over-reliance on telling rather than showing made everything feel flat and distant. The pacing was especially frustrating—it somehow managed to feel boring, dragged, and rushed all at the same time. The writing style just didn’t work for me, and I found myself struggling to stay engaged. I also felt like I never got to know the characters at all, which made it even harder to invest in their journey or relationships.
I think fans of Ava Reid or Adrienne Young would really enjoy these books because they have similar vibe and writing style, but those are also two authors that unfortunately don't work for me.

I really wanted to enjoy this book as the premise sounded perfect for me. However, Modern Divination just wasn’t for me.

I enjoyed the setting of the book and I did want to know what would happen to the characters. However, I felt the descriptions were overly detailed and at times, confusing where I struggled to understand the characters actions. I would have liked more backstory about the characters and to know more about the world outside of Aurelia and Teddy.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

In all honesty I felt let down by this book. I'd heard so many incredible things about it so went in with certain expectations: dark academia, Howl x Sophie coded protagonists, intricate magical system. Unfortunately these expectations were not met and so the whole thing fell a bit flat.

While the author clearly has an incredible talent with words, at times Modern Divination felt overwritten - there was a lot of tell and no show, sentences went on for way too long with so many flowery words it felt like I was being smacked with a thesaurus. It relied a lot on vibes and circular conversations between the MCs as opposed to what should have (and could have) been a solid and cohesive plot. There are some who make this approach work really well - Olivie Blake, for one - but here it just didn't do it for me.

It took me almost a week to finish it and it felt like a chore to get through with everything crawling at a snail's pace. Some who love a slow burn (romance and plot) might get on with this better than I did.

I wouldn't rule out reading something else by the author in future as the writing is at times beautiful and it's clear there's huge potential, but this was unfortunately a miss.

Super fine and interesting book. I really enjoyed the concept and characters. Would definitely recommend.

4.5 rounded up to 5

Where do I even begin? This book, beautiful!

It's rivals done right, cosy and high stakes all at once, beautifully romantic and all consuming, and the epilogue had me melting.

If your a fan of dark academia, forced proximity, witches, slow burn, banter, grovelling or found family this is for you.

I will say that the pacing was ever so slightly off, and I feel some parts of the story could have been cut. But Rory, Teddy and the overall arc of the story totally made up for it.

Thank you for giving me this arc for my honest review!

I was really excited for this book to come out with the premise of being dark academia witches with a murder mystery plot. But I felt as though there wasn’t enough development for the witches and the world building with the magic system. The author spent so much time with her inner monologue of the character with their run on sentences that it felt repetitive and unnecessary at times. I was hoping this book would’ve had a revise with it being picked up but I’m not sure much as really changed for the overall plot and structure of the store. Maybe the second book will add to the world but I will never know since I won’t be picking it up.

Thank you to Pan MacMillan and the author for providing me with a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

It’s hard to explain my feelings towards this book, whilst I didn’t hate it, I didn’t really love it either. I really struggled in the first 40% or so and found my attention being taken away and not really following along with the story. Whilst the story didn’t really pick up in pace I did find that I enjoyed the second half of the book more than the beginning.

I enjoyed some of the writing style, for sure the author knows how to create atmosphere and yearning between characters, but some of the writing felt a little repetitive and spelt things out a little too much. I also struggled with the mix of using first and last names for characters, it felt unnecessary.

This was a good example of rivals-lovers though there wasn’t much focus on the academic part of the story. Much of the story is located in one place which wasn’t the academic setting I believed it would be.

Would I recommend this book? Maybe, I think for those that enjoy soft atmospheric prose and character driven stories this would be a winner but it fell flat for me.

If you enjoy:
• dark academia aesthetic
• fantasy elements
• elements
• romantic side plot

Then you'll love Modern Diviniation. The aesthetic carried this book as the plot was a little underwhelming. Aurelia and Teddy are interesting characters but can become a bit boring or flat after the one note tone of their characters main quirks. They don't have much depth even though the romance can be enjoyed on a surface level. The emotional moments felt like they were trying to hard. They felt like they were trying to be an edgy aesthetic dark academia romance but fell short as nothing was explored beyond the aesthetic.

For fans of the atlas six,

Before I picked up this book the concept definitely spoke to me and I had some high expectations. Unfortunately this book left me a bit disappointed.
It started with a promising magic system in a contemporary setting. The characters have some great chemistry, starting as enemies, evolving to friends and ending up as lovers. I must admit their banter is great. However, the execution left me wanting more. Instead of getting an immersive exploration of the magic system, you get a narrative heavily focused on the main characters and their interactions. This just wasn't the book for me.