Monday, August 19, 2013

The Diviners by Libba Bray

"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."

And so ends my endeavor to read this 580-page book in one day. I couldn't have picked a better one to do it with, though. I wasn't quite convinced when I started it, but it started reeling me slowly in. By the end I was basically transfixed. One of the things that made it interesting was the '20s backdrop, I haven't read many set in that era and the way it was written with the language and the setting was pretty engaging and captivating. The writing in general was very well done, and there were spots here or there when it was nothing but imagery and it was really cool to read. Another selling point: it was witty. It made me laugh a couple times. The multiple-storyline angle mixed things up a bit, which was nice, although it gave each side character a little less "screentime." But that's another thing about the characters: they were all pretty surprising. I was hard-pressed to find a character that was exactly as they seemed on the outside; everyone had layers, and more often than not, those layers were pretty freaky. It enhanced the interest of the book. Anyway, this has been a rambling review of The Diviners, which I'd give 4.75 stars if I could. Trust me, it's worth the read! Go find it at Kettleson or MEHS. Seriously. I'm not kidding. I'm just gonna stare at you through the computer screen until you go out and do it.

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