Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Diviners

A fun book that I got through surprisingly quickly. Great audio narration and great storytelling.

I really appreciated the diversity of settings and characters, and learning about their struggles. It greatly strengthened the historical element of the story for me.

The characters themselves were lovable - well, mostly. Evie had me po-si-tutely annoyed sometimes, but she grew on me, and I also think her behaviour is actually realistic for a teenager in her position, which was refreshing. (But yes: too much slang. I agree with everyone on this).
I also absolutely loved the different friend/sibling/family dynamics. Theta/Henry and Memphis/Isaiah have my heart.

I do think it was a shame that Mable was kind of dropped 3/4 through the story. It didn’t make sense, and I also just liked following her pov. Hope this gets remedied in the next book.

Regarding the ending,

I did think the final fight was surprisingly quick. It felt a bit anticlimactic.

Regarding the romance,

is it really meant to be romance? I think it’s very clear Jericho likes Evie. I think it’s also clear she just sees him as a distraction, with a bit of shared scary experiences/teenage horniness to sort the sexual tension. Will be interesting to see how this develops. Definitely think we have a love triangle incoming.

Overall a fun read. Almost too spooky for me. But looking forward to the next book.

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charleyyyyy's review

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3.0

💜I first read this book when I was 12 years old, and I remember absolutely loving it. I wanted some good ✨️escapism✨️, so I decided to re-read this book.
💫It's clear that, had I read this book for the first time now, I really wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. But because of the nostalgia and my already existing love for the charicters, I had fun.
💜My favourite aspects of this book are the charicters and the setting.
The cast are all so vibrant and full of life, they also have great banter with each other that I very much enjoyed.
💫Evie is a very unlikeable protagonist, she is spoilt, annoying and selfish, but I've always loved her. I sympathise with her feeling like she's never enough, and that she just wants to be something special and have people like her. She is meant to be unlikeable, and thats part of her charm, i think. I enjoyed her development throughout the book.
💫I also remembered how much I love ✨️Henry!✨️ Henry is the best charicter in this whole series.
💜I appreciate that this cast of charicters is quite diverse, with queer charicters and BIPOC charicters and charicters with different religious beliefs.
💜The setting is very well writen, you really feel like you're in ✨️1920s New York✨️ because of the slang, the references, and the descriptions. It creates a great atmosphere.
💜This book was too long, it could have been cut down a lot, especially in the beginning.
💫The mystery developed very slowly, it felt like everytime we got a new piece of information about the murders, we then went dillydallying with the charicters doing nothing for the next 30 pages.
✨️Once the mystery realy got going though, it was fun.
💫This whole book did feel like a long prologue for the rest of the series, to introduce the charicters, their backstorys and the magic, before the story properly starts.
💜But I realy enjoyed being back with these charicters in this world.

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erikachung182's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

First read this 10 years ago and I’m quite happy to see it still holds up pretty well after all the time. Looking forward to reading the rest of the books in this series.

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