ruekeyronay's reviews
314 reviews

The idea of this book is one that I love but the execution was just lacking. The characters were interesting enough but not by much. I have no clue what happened for the majority of the book and the ending seemed so pointless. Really disappointed.

The best part of this story was the writing, the magic system and it being set in the 1920s. The worst part was the characters, which are the reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5.

The writing was so beautifully descriptive and Bray did a fantastic job of transporting readers to the 20s. I have never enjoyed taking in all the details of a setting more than I did with The Diviners, especially considering this is a decently long book.

The set up and pay off was also very satisfying and even though I predicted many reveals, I wasn't upset at all by that because it was done in such an artful manner. I loved the magic or paranormal elements as well: diviners, naughty John, the 'not a cult' cult, all of it was so creepy and so fun.

Moving on to the characters, they were flat, bordering on one dimensional and the only character who did have a bit of depth, Evie, was insufferable. All the parts I didn't enjoy in the book had her in them. Though she would start becoming decently likable in between, she'd be back to being insufferable soon after. A lot of her dialogue would come across as incredibly inorganic as well. She didn't feel like a person, ever.

Adult authors, please, please stop writing teenagers, especially girls, as irritating, selfish and shallow. Sincerely, a teenager.

I hope the next two books will show more of Mabel, Theta, Henry, Memphis, etc. They're a lot more interesting and have much more potential than Evie

I feel so emotional. A beautiful beginning and a beautiful ending. This series for me was pretty perfect, which is a controversial thing to say about any series but it's true. I enjoyed every single moment, every single character and every single book. 100/10.

DNFing at 52%, I struggled with the torturously slow pace from the start but hoped that it would take off eventually. And it did, but only for a chapter or two. Even though the plot had some direction at that point, the journey there was so painful that I finally gave up.

I usually never DNF books if I'm past the 20% mark so this book really melted my brain for me to give up more than halfway through.

Does this book deserve 4 stars? Probably not. But the ending was okay enough to go for it.

no thoughts, head empty

I did DNF this originally at 24% but decided to keep going. The book was very dense and I struggled to continue at times but overall it was a very decent read.

My main takeaway is that all of the women in the book would have been better off if there were no men in their lives

Alice really said no thoughts, head empty.

(I won't rate this because this is a children's book so a 19 year old is clearly not the intended audience)

Just to be clear, my rating of the book doesn't speak to whether I agree with the views of the author or not. I just found this to be highly entertaining.

I almost gave up on this mostly because the introduction never seemed to end, it's a bit unfair for the intro to be just as long as the manifesto itself. Finally getting to the manifesto was when I was hooked. Extreme, vulgar, wild, interesting, a bit cathartic.

Yet this is nothing compared to the amount of media that is out there depicting violence and hatred against women, very loudly and proudly, that make this book seem mild. Hell, there are ordinary conversations between men that casually degrade women in a way that would put the scum manifesto to shame.

The characters weren't just unlikable but also unreadable. I didn't get anything from this story, nothing of value. It seemed pointless from start to finish. Also, some things with Frances were almost identical to the character, Marianne, in the author's other book, Normal People. That struck me as strange.