I didn’t like Evie’s romance subplot either, it came completely out of nowhere and lacked any sort of chemistry, but it might (hopefully!) take another direction in the next books. I don’t have that kind of stamina anymore. It was so slow and the book so long that I started to struggle in the middle. The only thing I had any real issues with was the pacing. But I liked most everyone else too – her quieter friend Mabel, the uncle, Memphis, Theta. The lively party girl flapper Evie was my favourite, because I can’t remember the last time I got to see a female character like her, colourful and extroverted and too much and just a little bit amoral. I also liked pretty much all of the characters.

The horror undertones are also great – it’s a perfect book for the season. It’s all very smooth and easily the best aspect of the book. The speakeasies, the theatre, everything seems close enough to touch and it doesn’t shy away from the uglier sides of the 1920s like the racism either. It’s set in the 1920s and incredibly atmospheric, helped by the use of slang from the era and descriptive passages between various POVs that show the city from a birds-eye view. Her POV is mostly intertwined with those of Memphis, a numbers runner from Harlem who dreams of being a poet, and Theta, a dancer with a complicated past. Then mysterious occult murders start popping up. It’s the 1920s and she’s determined to enjoy her time in a bigger city to the fullest. After uncovering the sordid secret of a boy from her hometown in Ohio, she is exiled to New York City to live with her uncle. Well, she wouldn’t.Įvie can read people’s memories from objects. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. And then they’d sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. They’d sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who’d botched things so badly. The Diviners was one of those – but I went for it and I’m glad I did.

Sometimes, you have books on your TBR without quite knowing why, except perhaps a vague impression that someone, sometime might have said something good about it.

The diviners book