★★★★★★★★★★
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The Diviners #1 by Libba Bray - Kindle Edition - $9.99 on Amazon[/caption]The Diviners is pos-i-tute-ly awesome!
There are books that are nail-biting page-turners. There are books that are excellently written and thought-provoking. It’s a rarity to find a single book that accomplishes both, but The Diviners is one of those diamonds in the rough. It’s a suspenseful who-dunnit mystery wrapped in an enigma, where answers lead to questions and begin to reveal a mystery beyond your wildest expectations.
The story begins in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, circa 1926. A group of young socialites sit around a “wee-gee” board attempting to contact the other side for entertainment, but the fun ends when the planchette begins spelling out terrifying, ominous phrases from an entity identifying itself as “N-A-U-G-H-T-Y-J-O-H-N.”
“What makes you so naughty?” they ask. The response: “Y-O-U-L-L-S-E-E.”
In the cellar of a dilapidated, rotting house in a rundown neighborhood, something stirs. Naughty John has returned to finish his mission.
Although the story has an interesting cast of characters with their own backstories, the main player is 17-year-old Evie O’Neill. A flippant and live-for-the-moment party girl with the snappiest come backs, Evie has caused her share of trouble in her small town. But when she uses her secret ability to read objects and exposes a scandal of one of her classmates, Evie’s parents ship her off to stay with her uncle in New York City.
And Evie couldn’t be more thrilled.
Evie’s Uncle Will is the curator of a museum of supernatural artifacts – known by New Yorkers as “The Museum of Creepy Crawlies” – and doesn’t have the parental experience to reign in the enthusiastic Evie. When he is called to help police examine the mutilated body of a girl that they believe may have been an occult-related killing, Evie tags along and ends up touching a buckle on the victim’s shoe. Her mind is filled with the victim’s terrifying few minutes.
As the murders continue, Evie becomes determined to solve the mystery and put the killer behind bars. But this is more than a series of murders committed by a depraved maniac. This is part of a bigger picture and Evie, unbeknownst to her, is part of it.
Oddly enough, the humor in this book was one of the things I liked best. Evie is just…awesome. I loved the way she always had a plan or a scheme. If she wanted something, she was going to make it happen. In so many ways, Evie was wise beyond her years, even establishing a marketing campaign to help drive visitors to her Uncle’s museum.
But don’t get me wrong: this book is totally terrifying. You can almost feel the chill in the air when the killer approaches his unsuspecting victims. You know it’s coming. You hear the whistling, his taunting tune, "Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones."
How is that not terrifying? I had goosebumps on my arms just thinking about it.
The Diviners uses every one of its 578 pages to construct a complex, intertwining of tales from several young adults around the city. The pages didn’t drag on. There weren’t lulls. The story moves on at a steady pace, only stopping long enough to let the reader absorb information before moving on to the next step.
For having so many characters, they were all pretty well fleshed out. They were so different from one another – Memphis, the African American poet; Theta, the glamorous dancer and her gay roommate, Henry; Sam, the scheming pickpocket; Jericho, the hulky assistant to Uncle Will. But for all their differences, they share deep secrets that will bring them all together.
The only character I wasn’t crazy about was Uncle Will. For someone who curates a museum and teaches lessons on the supernatural, he seemed so skeptical of Evie’s abilities. He didn’t seem to listen to her much at all or acknowledge her good ideas. When he accepts the fact that Evie can read objects, he is extremely resistant to her reading anything else – even if it helps them solve the case. I just got a bad vibe from him.
I really don’t think I can do this novel justice. All I can say is I am dying for The Diviners #2.
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