The Diviners by Libba Bray
Genre: YA Fantasy/ Thriller/ Supernatural
About: 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.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Thoughts: The Diviners is a thriller fantasy Young Adult novel set in New York in the 1920’s. Evie is shipped to New York to live with her uncle who manages the museum of the creepy crawlies as it is called. Some murders related to the occult happen and Evie and her companions have to find the murderer before everything goes to hell.
I’ve never read anything by Libba Bray before and I was pleasantly surprised by her writing style and her ability to weave a multidimensional, multi-character book with ease. The atmosphere is wonderful, the 1920’s New York, along with it’s problems of the time, is a refreshing setting for a YA story.
Even though Evie is the focus of this book there are a lot of characters who are nicely fleshed out instead of being merely props or caricatures. These are a complex set of flawed characters where everyone has a back story which somehow is important to the plot.
So why have I given it a 3.5 rating when everything is seemingly great? Well, this is one of the very few books where I cannot pin point what exactly is missing. All I know is that I wasn’t really compelled to pick it up and continue reading after taking breaks.
All said and done, this is still one of the better books I’ve read in YA recently.
Book-Shelved 
I have had this on my TBR pile for awhile now, but still haven’t managed to get to it. I am glad you liked it. I understand though that feeling that something is missing that you can’t quite pinpoint. I’ve read a few books that I have the same feeling about.
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