i've been a big fan of libba bray for some time now. i remember reading her gemma doyle trilogy and absolutely falling in love with it. and the absolutely wild ride that was beauty queens. going bovine was a pretty interesting book but not my favourite.

i was really excited when i heard about the diviners series because for once i actually read the summary and it sounded like just the type of thing that i was interested in. i read it once when it came out and i've been meaning to read it again but i never got it around to it because life happened and then the second and third book in the series came out and well ... those books have just been gathering dust in my drawers as well. i finished my second read through of it last night and i honestly forgot how much i loved this book.

if you're into the supernatural and things that go bump in the night i think you'll like this book. a common complaint i hear is that people don't like the main character evie which i can understand but honestly, she doesn't bother me that much.

the basic gist of the story is that evie is a diviner, she can read peoples past by touching objects that they own, now this isn't a spoiler because it's literally mentioned in like the first few pages of the book, it basically sets up the rest of the story. so she leaves ohio and goes to new york to live with her uncle who runs a museum for the occult and supernatural. a minor detail i forgot to mention is that this is set in the 1920s which i think really added to the story personally but that's just me.

moving on.

so she goes to live with her uncle and then these murders begin happening by someone called the pentacle killer and basically he kills his victims and takes a part of their body because he needs it for a ritual. not to give too much away but there's basically a cult called the Brethren (which are in fact a real thing but somehow i don't think the modern day group is up to the same stuff that the people in the book are) and this guy trying to raise the beast to purge the world of sin yadi yadi yada. you get the idea. and evie uses her power to help solve the case.

there's also quite a few other characters involved, each who have their own special powers going on and who come from different walks of life.

the writing is really great, it really sucks you into the story and it fits with the setting and the plot ya know. like you ever read a story and the plot itself is great the writing style and the tone just don't fit what is going on? this wasn't a problem in this story. the murders themselves were so creepy and gruesome. the characters were great, they all had a lot of depth and believability to them. i know the use of 1920s sland was a problem with some people but i personally enjoyed it, i thought it added to the story. i don't know if flappers actually used slang in each and every single sentence because i wasn't alive then and all but i mean it fit so i was like okay.

it's a pretty big book, like 600 pages, and the print itself is fairly small so you K N O W that you're getting your bang for your buck. so all in all i definitely recommend and if you do decide to read it please let me know if you enjoyed it i'd love to discuss it with someone.

in the meantime, i'm going to be reading its sequel, lair of dreams, which i'm really excited about and catching up on season 3 of outlander (which i F I N A L L Y found online).