A fun and exciting escapade. It's the kind of book you can't put down and want to have the next installment already waiting on your bookshelf. A cozy weekend read with all of Libba Bray's flair.

I did not have time to read this when it was provided as an ARC, but read it after once I bought it for myself and it was truly wonderful. Libra Bray never disappoints.

Libba Bray is a master story teller. Each book is pretty long and may seem daunting, but each page is absolutely page turning and consuming. A cast of characters that will pull at your heartstrings, make you frustrated, and take you on a insane ride of an adventure. A spooky adventure to say the least. I will forever recommend this series if you enjoy Young Adult, but it can be enjoyed by older readers as well. This series is fantastic!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tkqmY8d_f8

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group U.K. Atom for an review copy of ‘Lair of Dreams’ by Libba Bray in exchange for an honest review. This novel was a ‘Read Now’ back in 2015. My apologies for the late feedback as unfortunately not long after I had to leave NetGalley for a few years due to serious vision problems. I eventually purchased its ebook and unabridged audiobook editions.

Anyway, then I discovered that it was Book 2 in Bray’s Diviners series! Eventually I read ‘The Diviners’ and recently finally moved on to ‘Lair of Dreams’.

New York City, 1927. Following the supernatural showdown in the first book of the series, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. The world now knows of her ability to 'read' objects, and she becomes a media darling, known as the Flapper of Fate and America's Sweetheart Seer.

Yet other Diviners are struggling to keep their powers secret as not everyone is accepting of the Diviners' abilities. In addition, a mysterious sleeping sickness is effecting people with some actually dying. No further details to avoid spoilers.

I felt that Libba Bray did well in capturing the energy of Jazz Age New York as well as the city’s darker side. She also captured the post WWI fascination with spiritualism and the occult.

Overall, I found this an engaging YA supernatural horror. Some of the descriptions were very disturbing and as a result I didn’t dare read it at night as I was wary of it colouring my dreams.

I am planning to continue with the series in the near future.

A great sequel and atmospheric second instalment to the Diviners series! Truly spooky and totally enjoyable.

This series has continued to be atmospheric and haunting with gorgeous prose and plenty of thrills!

I really enjoy Libba Bray’s characters and writing.

Quality Rating: Four Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Book two of the Diviners series down, and I'm still rolling ahead to devour the next one. With her television-size cast of characters, places and plot lines, Bray is shaping up to be quite the storyteller as she keeps expanding her world with remarkable control. Slightly pretentious analysis aside, Lair of Dreams was just as enjoyable as the first installment in the series, even if it depended more on the friction between characters than to their plight.

You gotta love some light-hearted romance where the girls have just as much self-respect as they deserve; you gotta love some creepy ghosts making things go bump in the night; you gotta love the roaring twenties and its dreamers trying to make their way in it. Add a flair of fantasy and you have the Diviners, a group of gifted young people converging closer and closer as something wicked this way comes. It was really exciting that we got to expand into Chinatown in Lair of Dreams, and I'm still impressed by how well balanced the narrative is between so many characters and cultures and their individual subplots. It's why I keep referencing television writing because each character's personal arc often seems more at the forefront of their chapters than the overall plot does - which has its pros and cons.

The Diviners, the first book, relied a lot on the Naughty John plotline to glue everything together; Lair of Dreams is far less concerned with its ghost story. Instead, it drops hints upon hints of what's to come: foreboding FBI agents, missing mothers, traitors in family homes, suspicious premonitions, surprising connections weaving everyone together since before they were born. The 'dreaming killer' plotline is still there, and ultimately resolved, but it felt like it was on a backburner. Honestly, this was mostly fine - it meant less momentum but we have enough investment in the characters are this point for it to work - but my one hesitation lies in if whatever's coming is coming fast enough? I want to sink my teeth into this big conspiracy hiding behind them instead of popping back and forth between a ghost story, a melodrama as well as the 'ultimate test' that's approaching.

But until then, I am still totally occupied with the Diviners themselves. Evie (who seems to be the protagonist, in my mind, just from the structure of the series) continues to be fascinating selfish and irrational but complex and heroic. But it's also really nice that each character gets to take the limelight for a bit because you do feel affection for them all. It's interesting that quite a few people are in different power positions than they used to be, and constantly evolving. Evie has a radio show, Sam's living well off the museum, Theta's rising in the ranks on stage, Henry's changing his dreams, Mabel's standing up for herself, Jericho's starting to reach out of his comfort zone. It keeps things moving even when the main story isn't so much in focus, and mostly importantly it makes us root for these developing characters because they feel so much more real.

Guess who's already bought the next book and is devastated she has to wait until February for the last book? This girl. I've raced through these novels pretty fast, but I don't feel like I've exhausted them of their entertainment just yet. They're reasonably long books but they're so easy to topple into that it feels like the blink of an eye, and that's really what books are supposed to do. Small flaws aside, Bray has reached the heights of escapism and that's all we readers can ask for.

A review was published on Goodreads and amazon, however for the purposes of feedback and title support in netgalley I enjoyed this book.

I absolutely love this series and I’m hoping she continues after the most recent book of the series.

This is one of my all-time favourite books! Bray creates such a perfect sense of the carefree nature of the jazz age and a feeling of impending doom. Add a sprinkling of magic and mayhem and this book quickly becomes my perfect mix! Love love loves it.

Libba Bray is like the Stephen King of YA. (Hannah, what does that mean?)
It means that she writes MASSIVE books, with the first half, or sometimes more, introducing you to the world, the characters, and the story. The beginning is always slow, but somehow it's not boring. When the action starts, it's ACTION. The characters mesh well together, and everyone has a distinct voice, and she leaves just enough Easter eggs to let you know the series isn't over. And, the 3rd book is already out, even after the almost 3 year wait for the 2nd book. I'm excited to see where the series takes us next.

I've yet to read the first book in this series after losing the desire to do so, so I will no longer be reviewing this book. Perhaps, sometime in the future I will read both books. Thank you for the opportunity to read this title.

This is such a mysteriously wonderful story that is so captivating, I loved Libba Bray's the Diviners and now I absolutely loved Lair of Dream, the next book can't some soon enough but I am glad to hear that its coming out sometime in 2017.