The Diviners by Libba Bray | AUDIOBOOK/BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: The Diviners AUTHOR: Libba Bray AUDIOBOOK NARRATOR : January LaVoy PUBLICATION YEAR: 2012 GENRE: Historical Fiction ( Mystery, Thriller, Paranormal) TIME DURATION: 18 hours FORMAT: AudioBook AVAILABLE  AT : audible

Lately there has been a huge craze for audiobooks . Everyone seems to be enjoying it and I did not want to be left out. Hence I started searching for “ Best AudioBooks “ on the internet and The Diviners by Libba Bray featured in most of them . Everyone unaminously recommended this book on audiobook format. It was an outstanding experience and I am looking forward to consuming more books on audio. I loved its audiobook narrator JanuaryLavoy – loved how she used different accent and voices while narrating. She even voiced out the male characters with conviction which felt totally real. A huge round of applause to this woman for her outstanding performance .

The story follows a bunch of teens with supernatural powers living in 1920s New York where a serial killer is in loose. At the beginning of the story, our main protagonist Eevie who possesses the super power to see people’s past is living with her parents . One day she gets into trouble while using her super powers and as part of punishment she is sent to New York to live with her uncle Will who works in an occult museum. Her uncle is asked to help with the investigation of these strange murders and that is how Eevie and a bunch of her friends get involved in this whole fiasco.

The main character Eevie was potrayed as an angsty moody teenage drama queen which is one of the character tropes in YA fiction that I  don’t necessarily like. She was too stubborn, wild and overtly ambitious for her age which rubbed me the wrong way - it is just a personal preference of mine where I like to have my young adult characters a bit sorted and naive or at least act their age . And that is exactly why I liked her best friend Mabel who was simple and her issues seemed relatable. This  made me root for her in a sequence where these best buddies were not on good terms.

I absolutely loved all the side cast of characters who were distinct and intriguing. Sam, Memphis and Theta are some of the interesting characters in the story who left a great impact on the story . In fact, with the introduction of these characters, the story actually started to pick up and became interesting. There was a lot of sass and the banter among these teens was to die for. Keeping up with so many characters along with their separate back stories was tiresome yet entertaining.
The villain “ Naughty John” was super terrifying and JanuaryLavoy did a very good job in creating a dark atmospheric world with his voice. She made him sound creepy and super dark which is what the character demanded.

The plot involved a lot of death and destruction which made it intense , gripping and action packed. The plot seemed too stretched unnecessarily and at times pointless. The plot twists simply went on and on. With every chapter , we were introduced to a new character , a new murder where a brand new mystery was unravelled. Being a plot driven reader, I enjoyed all of this facade in the beginning but soon this never ending tale of death and drama became exhausting and I just kept looking at the time stamp and wondering when is it going to end.

The best thing about the book was its pacing. Although there was a lot of over explaining of mundane stuff , loads of characters, perspectives, back stories and timelines yet I found it surprisingly fast paced.

I don’t necessarily gravitate towards stories that deals with paranormal activities. I absolutely loathe TV shows / Movies with such themes. But when it comes to books, I always want to branch out to find new genre to read and with this book I could tick off my check list of reading a paranormal historical fiction.

If you are planning on trying out audiobook for a change , this one is highly recommended. It will remind you of your parents/grandparents narrating bed time stories with different accent and weird background noises. I had a swell time listening to the audiobook unfortunately the same can’t be said about the story .  I had to use the word SWELL in my review because this word has been mentioned countless times by our main protagonist. LOL..!!  Just because I loved JanuaryLavoy’s voice so much , I am going to listen to the next book in the series with the hope that the story gets better.

RATING for the audiobook- 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕  (  5/5 )

RATING for the book/story – 🌕🌕🌕 ( 3/5 )