The Diviners Review
The Diviners is set in 1926 New York and the book starts off with an upper class girls birthday party which was a bit of a bore until she pulled out a ouija board and the group calls forth a ghost named naughty John and the fail to properly send his spirit away which will lead to trouble for our actually main characters later down the line. Evie O'Neil has been sent to live in New York after she uses her special ability to see memories of an objects owner when she holds it at a party a reveals that a son of an important figure in her home town got a girl pregnant out of wedlock and since Evie refuses to take back what she said since she knows what she said was true her parents send her to New York to live with her uncle. Evie's Uncle runs a museum that is about the occult as well as teaches classes about the subject which is why later on in the book he is brought in as a consultant about a series of murder and Evie ends up nosing her way into the investigation as well.
Another main character we are introduced to early on in the book is Memphis Campbell a young African American man who currently works for a man that runs a lot of speakeasies in Harlem as well as other forms of crime as the one who collects the money but what he's really passionate about is writing although he has never been satisfied enough with any of his writings to show it to anyone else. Memphis use to have the ability to heal people but he hasn't been able or rather refuses to even try to since he failed to save his mother's life after she fell ill. while Memphis himself isn't involved in the supernatural anymore he is still very aware of it and since it seems that his younger brother is psychic it doesn't seem like he can just live a normal life no matter how much he wants to.
There are a number of other important characters that are introduced as the story goes on such as Sam Lloyd a boy that around Evie's age who she meets right after she gets to New York when he kisses her and steals twenty dollars from her which leads her to disliking him and really wanting him to repay her. Sam very much seems like he will end up being Evie's love interest since the two of them often banter together, Evie is forced to work with him later on in the story and they both end up being vulnerable with each other later on. Another character is Mabel Rose who is a friend that Evie has mostly interacted with as a pen pal before the story starts since Mabel lives in the same building as Evie's uncle. Mabel is a lot less bold and more well behaved than Evie and she has parents who are more interested in their causes than their daughter and all these things end up causing friction in their friendship later on. Theta Knight a dancer for the Ziegfeld Follies and Henry De Bois who is her roommate and pianist that she has a sibling like relationship are two more important characters. A young man named Jericho who was taken in by Evie's uncle and works with him is one of the few people who seems to dislike Evie from the start.
Overall I loved this book, it had an interesting murder mystery plot as well as an interesting set of characters to follow and it also had an interesting mythology with the diviners being people who were just given some sort of power and all the rituals involving ghosts. Please tell me your thoughts on this book or series overall in the comment section below.
