Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Diviners

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The Diviners by Libba Bray

38 reviews

sihah's review against another edition

dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.25

DNF with 21 minuntes left. Made it through most of the book, thought it was pretty great, but they murder a cat for literally no reason VERY graphically at the end and now I'm just never gonna finish this series.

Literally what is with stupid white women and murdering cats. I'll never understand it.

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asleepyreader's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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lyss_reads's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

3.0

An otherwise great book I would have loved if it hadn't been ruined by assisted suicide of a disabled character

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itsmeyseniab's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was one of my most anticipated reads for the autumn season, and let me tell you it did not fail to put me in the fall mood! I was a little bit nervous to pick this one up because of all of the hype it has received, but I believe that the hype is well deserved.

The plot was SPOOKY. I loved how Libba Bray combined the supernatural, mystery/thriller, fantasy, romance and historical fiction all into one novel! In this we follow a cast of characters known as “Diviners” (those who have special abilities such as object reading, wielding fire, etc.) who are trying to hunt down someone - or something - that has murdered several people across New York City in the 1920s. I think the story itself was really fun and kept me entertained! I will say that this is more of a slow burn to start, but once I got invested I was IN IT.

I LOVED how character driven this story was. Although this is told in multiple POVs I didn’t find it hard to follow at all because each character had a very distinct voice. The two standout characters for me were Evie and Theta (the Flapper girl and the Ziegfeld girl/showgirl respectively). They stole the show every time they were in a scene and I loved how snarky they both were! I can’t wait to see all of our characters learn more about their abilities and each other in other novels!

Although I think that this novel could’ve been shortened a little bit, I appreciate how atmospheric it was and how much detail went into the 1920s setting. I truly felt like I was there and I definitely see myself revisiting this novel during this time of the year in the future! All in all, this was an excellent start to the series and I am VERY eager to pick up the next three!

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kelly_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is the first book (which I listened to as an audiobook from borrowbox) in what I believe is a series of 4. Its main character is a 17 year old girl called Evie (she calls herself a flapper) who has visions. It’s set in the 1920s and written in third person.

Evie, her uncle, and a couple of friends need to research some creepy cult-like murders with supernatural elements to help stop a serial killer.

The time period it’s set in is very apparent, with the vocabulary, attitudes, clothing described etc. Initially it was great but it quickly got annoying as I did find that this was overdone with Evie particularly, with excessive slang terms and the suffix “ski” with random words (“positiv-a-lutely” and “you bet-ski”).

I enjoyed that there were hints towards a group of people with special abilities, and lots of info to gather around the location and serial killer, but the book did jump around to different POVs too much for my taste.

This book came across like an extended ghost story with the Ouija board leading to a killer ghost rampage and nightmares etc. What he was doing would certainly have been scary and disturbing but someone calling themselves “naughty John” constantly and singing a children’s song all the time just got really silly. It was a bit like Jeepers Creepers, without the jump moments.

Overall, I liked the idea but I didn’t personally connect to the any of the main characters so it’s clearly not for me.

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ivana's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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malin12ccf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

#CBR12 Bingo: The Roaring 20s

17-year-old Evangeline "Evie" O'Neill can sense people's secrets if she holds a personal object belonging to them and concentrates hard on it. She becomes decidedly unpopular in her home town when she gets drunk at a party and reveals that one of the town's golden boys knocked up a hotel maid and paid her to have the problem "dealt with". He accuses her of slander and threatens to sue her family. Evie can't very well reveal how she knows the details of the story and isn't exactly unhappy when her parents send her to stay with her bachelor uncle in New York City anyway. Evie dreams of going to parties, seeing shows, and gossipping with her best friend Mabel, daughter of radical socialists, who live in the same building as Evie's uncle Will.

Before Evie even makes it to the museum that her uncle Will runs, she's been kissed and pick-pocketed by the roguish Sam Lloyd at Grand Central Station. At the museum, she's introduced to Jericho Jones, the tall and deadly serious young man that her uncle has taken under his wing (and who Mabel has a massive crush on). While Jericho seems just as scholarly and stick-in-the-mud as Evie's uncle, he has secrets of his own. Mabel and Evie also befriend Theta Knight, a glamorous Ziegfeld girl, and her "brother" Henry, a talented piano player who live in the same building as them. Important to the story is also Memphis Campbell, who used to have the gift of healing, until his mother was dying.

All of these young people from different social backgrounds and locations in the US meet up over the course of the story, as a comet is about to travel over New York City and a series of gruesome murders with occult connections catch the attention of reporters. The police ask Evie's uncle Will to consult, but it's not until Evie's party lifestyle threatens to have her sent back home that she reveals her psychic powers and how she's able to read objects at the murder scenes (and feel a connection to the creepy murderer).

This is a big book, with a lot of different point of view characters. It seems impeccably researched, with so many details about city life in the 1920s, complete with period slang (which got a bit confusing at times). January LaVoy, who narrates the book, did an excellent job differentiating between the large cast of characters of both genders. I've heard her narrate quite a few books now, and I really like her.

While I can see that Evie possibly can get on some people's nerves as a protagonist, there really is such a wide variety of significant characters set up in this book that everyone should be able to find someone to identify with. I think I was a lot more sympathetic to Mabel, the shy and bookish best friend rather than with the vivacious party girl Evie - but pretty much everyone in the large cast is well-drawn and interesting in their own right. Obviously, I don't think Evie appreciates a good museum enough (I would love to have access to the museum "of creepy crawlies" that uncle Will manages).

As far as I'm aware, this is the first of four books of historical fantasy, setting up the various pretty young things we encounter in this book as "The Diviners" of the series title. Evie, Sam, Jericho, Theta, Henry, Memphis, and his younger brother all have unusual abilities of some kind. While the murderer is unmasked and stopped by the end of the story, it's made very clear that the looming evil that is awakening is not vanquished for good and Evie's adventures in the Big Apple are clearly just beginning by the end of this book.

This book has been on my TBR list almost since it came out, but I kept putting off reading it since I knew there would be more books in the series. It's now been completed, and based on the first book, I will absolutely be checking out more installments. I just need to summon up the energy for lengthy books with a fair amount of peril and grisly murders, which I'm not necessarily now.

Judging a book by its cover: This book has been out since 2012, and as a result, has a number of covers by now, most of them in some shade of purple. This is the cover on my e-book copy, where you see the silhouettes of some of the prominent characters, as well as some background images of 1920s New York, where the book is set.

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eurydice's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

5.0

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