Wednesday, September 18, 2019

[Review] The Diviners by Libba Bray

The Diviners by Libba Bray 

Series: The Diviners #1
Rating: 5 stars

Published: September 18th 2012

Goodreads Synopsis:
Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.
Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.
As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.
Roaring Twenties historical fiction (with magical realism and spooky Halloween vibes) at its finest! I'm going through a little bit of a phase where I finally decide to tackle YA that isn't 2019 releases or new debuts. It's refreshing, to say the least. I've encountered hits, and many misses, but I can say for one that The Diviners is a definite hit.

Evie O'Neill is sent to New York City to stay with her Uncle Will after causing some mischief with her 'parlor trick' - the ability to divine someone's past from a precious possession. But NYC has more hustle and bustle than what Evie is used to in her hometown, since a serial killer is on the loose, and Evie puts it upon herself to solve the case with her new set of friends.


I think the one strength this book has is the ability to juggle so many POVs and keep readers entranced with every single character! And it's been such a long time since I've read a book that features a big cast that will eventually get together! (To fight off the forces of evil!) It reminded me of Six of Crows, or even Percy Jackson, in that manner. There's Evie and Sam, Theta and Memphis. Henry and Jericho. Etc. Everyone is full of secretive pasts and powers and there's just so much - I wanted the sequels immediately. Also it was super easy to distinguish between POVs and that's something I haven't really found in some of my more recent reads. Everyone's voice shines through. You can hear their anguish, their longing, their pain.

I must say though, Evie had my heart stolen from the start. It was so easy to get caught up in her 1920s flapper mannerisms and slang and imagine her as the free-spirited youth that she is. She initially is selfish in her ways, but when we got to the heart of the problem, and when the going got tough, she squared up. I don't know how to talk about a particular scene without spoiling it, but there was so much growth when it came to the death of her brother that occurred pre-book. She spends so much of the story running away from accepting his death that when it finally comes to haunt her in the very end, she's very candid and brutal about the trauma. The passage was beautifully written, so I'll share a bit of it.

She'd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they'd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They'd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they'd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Wester Front, blown apart in no-man's-land, writhing in trenches of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they'd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself. - p. 436

Even underneath Evie's maturity is a cognizant awareness of her powers and their repercussions, something that isn't often discussed with protagonists, who sometimes go out and about without a care in the world.

If she wanted to, she could press any of these things between her palms, concentrate, and draw out Will's secrets. Jericho's, too. And Sam's and Mabel's and Theta's. The list was endless. But it was a form of stealing, knowing people's secrets without their consent. And she wasn't sure she wanted the responsibility of knowing. - p. 294

This book deviates a lot from the books I normally like (even though historical fiction completely calls to me) because it is spooky! I normally do not read spooky books (not because I'm scared of them, they just never speak to me. But The Diviners did. The way Bray built up the murders (and the murderers) leaves me on the edge of my seat. You just don't know who will be next!

Their is also a lovely meshing of the spiritual with the historical, the undercurrent of a volatile political landscape serving as a backdrop for a mystical read. Again, literary critic me enjoys this sort of thing.

"There is a duality inherent in democracy - opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balances takes a great deal of energy - and, as I've said, spirits are attracted to energy." - p.370

The Diviners was a real page-turner and I wish I had the sequels on hand (in matching paperbacks, no less).

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