Review: The Diviners (DNF)

Title:  The Diviners
Series:  The Diviners #1
Author:  Libba Bray (Website | Twitter)
Age Group:  Young Adult
Publisher:  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication Date:  September 18, 2012
Source:  Gifted

Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.
Evie worries he’ll discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only brought her trouble so far. But when the police find a murdered girl branded with a cryptic symbol and Will is called to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.
As Evie jumps headlong into a dance with a murderer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. A young man named Memphis is caught between two worlds. A chorus girl named Theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.

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Man, I was so excited going into this book. While I had never read anything by Libba Bray before, I'd heard awesome things about her works, particularly this one.  However, I found I was pretty disappointed with this book.  I had the hardest time connecting with the characters, getting interested in the plot, and finding motivation to read it.  Eventually, I had to mark this one as DNF at about half way through.  

Connecting with characters is a must for me when I read a book.  If I don't care about the characters, I find I don't care much about the story overall.  With this one, I couldn't even bring myself to like the characters, particularly Evie, out main gal.  She was just...oh my gosh, so frustrating.  From the very beginning of the book, she cared less about the people around her and more about how she was perceived.  I grew tired of her thirst for fame very quickly, especially when she began going behind some of her loved ones backs in order to achieve it.  She was a shallow, snobby girl.  I can't say whether she improved or not toward the end of the novel since I didn't finish it but I couldn't find it in me to continue reading in order to find out.  

The other characters weren't much better but I can say that I at least liked them.  However, we didn't really get to know them much, at least not in the first half of the book.  The only character I'm honestly a bit sad that I won't get to know more about is Sam.  He was the highlight of the entire book for me.  Funny, charming, and a thief, he was exactly what I like in my book boys.  And his banter with Evie when they were together was off the charts.  I loved it!

The plot had the potential to be absolutely fabulous but I found it took a little too long to get rolling.  Nothing really major or interesting happened until about 100 pages in and by that time I was already playing with the idea of marking it as DNF.  I will admit though, once things did start happening, they were really interesting and creepy.

Another problem I had with this novel was that it was just unnecessarily long.  It's 500+ pages and it could have easily been cut down to 300, I think.  There was just way too much description.  There were entire pages of just description and I just got way too bored way too quickly with it.  

I'm sad I didn't like this book.  I really wanted to but I just could not get into it.  While it wasn't all bad, there was just too many of my bookish pet peeves rolled into these pages for me to really enjoy it.

“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?” 
“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.” 

Two Teapots