Set in the prohibition fueled 1920’s New York, (after reading two books now set in this time period I’m really warming to it) The Diviners follows a group of teens with strange abilities. As they live their lives trying to make sense of their abilities, a string of murders take place and the group find themselves caught up in all the chaos.
This book is brilliant. I realise that the majority of my reviews are just me gawking at how much I enjoyed the book, but really this was an amazing book. I’ve always had a small interest in the supernatural, be it visiting local haunts or going on ghost walks, and this book really feeds into that fantasy.
The main story line in the book follows that of Naughty John as he is awoken by kids messing around with a ouji board at a party. Naughty John is the chosen one of a religious organisation who believes that one day the Beast will be summoned to Earth by the chosen one and cause Armageddon, killing all the sinners leaving only the devout. So you know, standard religious stuff. Although this is the main story line, the book spends a lot of the time on the characters themselves developing the relationships between each other and giving back stories that show how the characters all ended up in New York together. This kind of character development makes you feel like this is going to a long series, which I am very much looking forward to.
It’s hard to talk about all different character simply because there are so many of them. Evie seems to be the main diviner the book focuses on, with her being sent off to live with her uncle in New York after ‘shaming’ herself at a party. Once you get to New York the characters just keep on coming, with each one seeming to hide an even darker secret than the next. This is one of my main themes through out the book. Everyone has their own dark past they are trying to deal with and I feel like this will become more prevalent in the books to come as each secret is revealed.
The creepiest thing about this book has to be how some of the most disturbing elements are based on fact for example the human experimentation and the religious extremism. In the notes at the end the author writes “Often, the monsters we create in our imaginations are not nearly as frightening as the monstrous acts perpetrated by ordinary human beings in the aim of one cause or another” The killer in the book truly believes in what he is doing and it’s worrying to think that their are people our there with similar beliefs who are capable of trying the same things.
At the end of the book you get a sense of where the story is heading next and you see how the characters are even more intertwined. Luckily for me I’m almost four years behind so I’m able to jump onto the next one straight away!
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