The Diviners

magine you're a jive New Yorker during the 20's--jazz rules; there are speakeasies around every corner, an abundance of bootlegged liquor and flapper girls dancing the night away. To enjoy it, all you've gotta do is go undercover and hope the cops don't bust in on the party. Evie O'Neill is one hip gal who desperately wants to be in the thick of it all. She finally lands her chance when her uptight parents ship her off to the big city after an ill-performed party trick. Evie moves in with her Uncle Will, curator of the aptly named "Museum of Creepy Crawlies," and is having the time of her life until a series of grisly murders threatens to ruin her good time. With the help of "Unc," some sweet soothsaying abilities and a few talented friends, Evie's embarks on a serious mission to figure out whodunit; because if the New York nightlife doesn't get to her first, there's a good chance the killer will!This was my introductory into the world of Libba Bray and I'm quite pleased! The Diviners is gripping, suspenseful and memorable without being too over-the-top. There's so much potential, and let me just tell you, the book lives up to it 110%! After reading, it's very apparent Bray's done her research well--from the diction to the fashion and politics, I was completely immersed in the glamorousness that is the Roaring 20's. I guess the only downer is that, well; all the research makes the book quite thick. Occasionally, the text verges on meticulous leaving it feeling more like an encyclopedia entry than a story. But worry not because it doesn't happen often and Bray's affinity for vivid storytelling trumps all. There's so much going on that the murders sort of meld into the background and feel more like an afterthought, which is okay because it's a story more about people and their inner demons than anything else. The characters are what made me fall hard and is where the strength of Bray's writing lies. She just totally baited me--hook, line and sinker.First off, can I just say how much I want Evie to be my BFF. Forget Mable, it's all about the Nikk-ski. See what I did there? We're meant to be! Not only is she a total doll but she's a firecracker to boot. Evie isn't afraid to get her hands dirty at a crime scene or put a fast-talking reporter in his place. She's got moxie, spirit and gusto, but as feisty as she is, she's just as loyal and dedicated to those whom she calls a friend. She's certainly not perfect and she gets herself into trouble but she's candid and remains true to her convictions. How could you not love someone like that? Then there's the lovable thief, Sam Lloyd. He fights hard to worm his way into Evie's heart and it's hard to tell whether he's being serious or pulling the wool over our eyes. Either way, he plays a dangerous game and has won my heart over. We also have Jericho, Will's smarty-pants assistant and the apple of Mabel's eye. I'm intrigued to see just how far Bray will take the interesting twist in his storyline.Bray rounds it out with Theta, a vivacious vixen who comes from humble beginnings. She is the embodiment of 20's excess and is a girl after my own heart. There's also Henry, Theta's gay brother-from-another-mother who's a whiz at the piano and her lover, Memphis. Oh, sweet Memphis with the charming smile and poetic wordsmithery (is that even a real word?). Memphis has a soulful sadness about him, what I like to call, the melancholy blues. His unwavering devotion to his brother and beautiful way with words are simply irresistible. Bray's diverse cast of characters is bold and I applaud her for that because it's not something you see very often in YA. All of our players harbour these immensely tragic backgrounds and unbeknownst to everyone else, life-altering secrets. I can't wait to see how their individual stories intersect and play out in future installments. Overall, The Diviners was an utter joy to read and if I had to describe it in one word, it's divine. Libba's on the fast-track to becoming a favourite author of mine, so yeah, what an introduction indeed!Food for Thought: The Diviners is a chilling paranormal tale that's as authentic and genuine as its beautifully imperfect characters. Though a bit heavy on text, it's worth reading through every single word and it never feels like a chore. Bray's world and her peeps will blow you away with how posi-tute-ly brilliant they are! And how!

At 17, Evie O’ Neill is already pretty sure she’s outgrown her Ohio hometown. It’s the 1920s and she’s a budding flapper, and after one disastrous night out her parents feel they don’t have much of a choice except to ship Evie out of town until things blow over. You see, a drunken Evie was tuned up enough to demonstrate her little talent: if she holds an object belonging to someone else, she can discern things about that person…and she accidentally revealed a major secret of the son of a prominent local businessman. So she’s sent off to New York City to spend a few months with her uncle William, a bachelor scholar who runs an occult museum. She promptly makes friends and starts getting into trouble, but bigger trouble is about to find her. A series of ritual murders begin to occur, and her uncle is brought in to consult by the police. She of course finagles her way into the investigation, which becomes increasingly fraught as the grotesque executions continue, and it becomes a race against time to stop the killer before he can literally unleash hell on earth. The most prominent of the several secondary narratives follows Memphis Campbell, a Black teenager who lives with his little brother Isaiah in their aunt Octavia’s apartment. Memphis had had a supernatural gift for healing, but lost his skill when he was unable to prevent the death of his mother. He dreams of joining the exclusive salons of the Harlem Renaissance with his poetry, but runs numbers for a crime boss to earn money. Isaiah has special powers of his own, able to see into the future. In this world, there have always been those with these sorts of abilities, but they are becoming much more numerous as a showdown with a mysterious figure looms on the horizon. This was my second shot at Libba Bray, whose A Great and Terrible Beauty fell very flat for me when I read it in 2016. I’d been told this one was much better, though, and I do agree with that. Bray clearly did quite a lot of research into 1920s New York City, and the book’s strongest suit is its setting and atmosphere. There are password-protected speakeasies, one of the side characters is a showgirl at the Ziegfeld Follies, and there’s more period slang than you can shake a stick at. While the gorier aspects of the murders are left unsaid, there is genuine creepiness in the set-ups for them. The plot moves quickly, and Bray’s prose is engaging. The issues I had with this book are primarily rooted in the fact that it is very obviously the start of a series. It is overlong at about 600 pages, and its large cast of characters mean a lot of them have relatively flat, stereotyped personalities. But of course, it is doing the work of setting up the basis of the supernatural world that the rest of the books will explore, and presumably the characters are meant to get more development as the tale expands as well. I’d hope that would first and foremost include Evie, whose obnoxious behavior is half understandable as a teenager convinced she understands everything about the world, but the other half is just irritatingly foolhardy. One thing that I never could understand is how she seemed to have continuous access to large sums of money? She is constantly buying new clothes and accessories (not to mention cocktails), but it seems unlikely her parents would be sending her a generous allowance given that she was expelled in shame. Which leads me to one of my other issues…what set of parents, exasperated as they may be with their errant daughter, send a party girl from a little town in Ohio to New York City, the center of Jazz Age excess, as a punishment? It doesn’t make any sense. This is reasonably entertaining, but its slightly-overstuffed quality and failures of character development kept me from really getting drawn in and I’m unlikely to continue the series.