(Disclaimer:  This will contain spoilers!)


'It took a moment for her mind to register that what lay sprawled on the old wooden pier had been a human being.”


'The Diviners' starts off ominously enough with a bunch of rich kids of 1920s playing ouija board and accidentally (and obliviously) releasing a malevolent spirit to the city of New York.

Evangeline 'Evie' O'Neil is a beautiful young socialite from Ohio who is very much ahead of her time.  She dreams of Broadway, big cities and speakeasies but had to live in close-minded Ohio instead.  She also has a secret power; she can dig up a person's deepest secrets just by touching their belongings.

After exposing a young gent's gallivanting ways and then mucking around all drunk in the city's fountain (booze were illegal in 1920s USA), her parents had had enough and sent her to New York to live with her uncle (to wait it out until her scandal dies down).

Her uncle operates a museum for the supernatural and is pretty much an expert in everything occult.   When mysterious murders (revolving around occultist symbols) have been committed, her uncle are recruited by the police to help them catch the killer.  And Evie is thrown right in the middle of the series of killings.

I quite enjoyed this novel, Evie is such an interesting character to read.  She is vain and shallow and occasionally selfish that had this been any other novel, she would have been the villain or the heroine's sidekick.  She might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she is definitely mine.

The entire cult thingy and the mass suicide (Jonestown anyone???) are fascinating as hell.  The villain is scary as well.  This would make a very fun movie.

There are a lot of characters in this book and many of them are not interconnected yet, so I am excited to see how their dynamics will unfold in the later books.

The only bone I had to pick is on the romance part of the story.  I liked Jericho from the start and hated Sam and I was so happy that she ended up liking Jericho near the end.  However, it was also very abrupt, considering that she spent the better part of the 500+ pages ignoring Jericho's existence. Did she even truly like him?  And Mabel…..  TT

Verdict: 4.2/5