The Diviners by Libba Bray

Summary:
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-toot-ly thrilled. New York is the city of speakeasies, shopping, and movie palaces! Soon enough, Evie is running with glamorous Ziegfield girls and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is Evie has to live with her Uncle Will, curator of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult--also known as "The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies."

When a rash of occult-based murders comes to light, Evie and her uncle are right in the thick of the investigation. And through it all, Evie has a secret: a mysterious power that could help catch the killer--if he doesn't catch her first. (from GoodReads)

Review:
I can't help but compare The Diviners to The Gemma Doyle Trilogy; obviously it's the same author, and both book series are historical fiction fantasy. Granted, they're both set in two very different time periods, and even the fantastical elements are different. While I really enjoyed The Diviners, I still think The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is better.

I think the 1920s is such an interesting and fun time period, so I'm really glad Libba Bray tackled this era in The Diviners. She was able to capture the feelings and atmosphere very accurately - I felt like I was living in New York right alongside Evie and her friends. There is some even '20s slang thrown in, which made the reading experience authentic.

Aside from the setting, The Diviners takes on a lot of different subplots and character points-of view. Mainly the book is told from the perspective of Evie, our main heroine, and Memphis, a boy living in Harlem who is marginally part of the story. I enjoyed Memphis's sections, but it was obvious his side was set-up for the rest of the series. He never interacts with Evie and his story has nothing to do with the main conflict of The Diviners. 

What is different about The Diviners vs The Gemma Doyle Trilogy is that The Diviners is written in third person while the latter is first person. Normally, this doesn't bother me, but I noticed that I could not connect with Evie as well as I could with Gemma. I think the change in writing style affected this, making Evie seem shallow. I hope the future novels will allow the reader to see more sides of Evie.

The plot of The Diviners was interesting and actually pretty creepy. I don't get scared easily, but the parts with Naughty John really spooked me! So if that's your type of book, The Diviners will definitely make it hard for you to sleep at night.

Overall I enjoyed The Diviners. It was super long but a lot happens. If you're interesting in historical fiction fantasy, I would definitely recommend The Gemma Doyle Trilogy first, but after you read that I think The Diviners should be your next choice.

Rating: 8 out of 10.
FTC: borrowed from library.

2012/Little, Brown/578 pages.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Summary:
The fifty contestants in the Miss Teen Dream Pageant thought this was going to be a fun trip to the beach, where they could parade in their state-appropriate costumes and compete in front of the cameras. But sadly, their airplane had another idea, crashing on a desert island and leaving the survivors stranded with little food, little water, and practically no eyeliner.

What's a beauty queen to do? Continue to practice for the talent portion of the program - or wrestle snakes to the ground? Get a perfect tan - or learn to run wild? And what should happen when the sexy pirates show op?

Welcome to the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Your tour guide? None other than Libba Bray, the hilarious, sensational, Printz Award-winning author of A Great and Terrible Beauty and Going Bovine. The result is a novel that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you never look at beauty the same way again. (from book jacket)

Review:
I adore Libba Bray and her novels, so I was really excited to borrow Beauty Queens from the library. This book was so awesome! It's crazy to think that the same author who wrote Beauty Queens also wrote The Gemma Doyle trilogy because the books are so different - but in a good way.

Libba Bray is a very intelligent author, in both her writing and plotting, so I knew that Beauty Queens would be a smart book with commentary on the ideas of beauty. The whole book was a satire, and even included product placement and commercial breaks to mirror tv shows and movies. There was a lot of discussion on feminism and the pressures on young girls from society to be beautiful. The commentary could be heavy-handed at times, but I didn't mind because Beauty Queens espoused such a great message.

If this wasn't a satire, I might not have enjoyed the book as much, since Libba Bray uses many tropes and cliches to characterize the villains and some plot elements. For example, at one point one of the beauty queens is dangled over a pond of piranhas - and who hasn't seen that before? But I knew it was supposed to be comical and not serious so I didn't really mind.

I liked that the novel changed points-of-view, so the audience could see each of the girls and what makes her tick. There were even neat facts sheets about each of the contestants spread throughout the book. Each girl had some kind of secret and none were as shallow as they seemed at first. Even so, most of the girls fit some kind of stereotype: the dumb blonde; the warrior feminist only doing the pageant to take it down; the girl doing the pageant to please her parents, etc. But, once again, since this was a satire, it didn't matter as much.

A combination of Lord of the Flies, Lost, and Drop Dead Gorgeous, Beauty Queens was funny and an enjoyable book to read. It had great messages about beauty, societal pressures, and feminism and discussed them in an engaging manner. I would highly recommend Beauty Queens along with Libba Bray's other novels.

Rating: 8 out of 10.
FTC: borrowed from library.

2011/Scholastic/396 pages.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Cameron Smith is the king of low expectations. To him, not caring equals minimum disappointment, so he doesn't put an effort into school, his job, or his family. It seems that his life is going nowhere - that is, until he contracts Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, also known as Mad Cow disease. Cameron's illness is fatal, but there seems to be hope when he is visited by a sugar-loving angel named Dulcie. According to Dulcie, Cam must embark on a journey that will simultaneously cure his disease and save the world. Accompanied by a dwarf and a talking yard gnome, Cam must outwit evil wizards, fire monsters, snow globe fanatics and a happiness cult in order to save himself and humanity.

When Libba Bray announced the synopsis for Going Bovine, I thought it was a joke. It sounded so weird that I was certain she was just joking around. But I was wrong. I probably would never have read this book because it sounded so odd; but I love Libba and thought I would give it a try.

Going Bovine was a very interesting novel. The author, Libba Bray, is also known for her Gemma Doyle Trilogy, which is completely different than this book. It was weird going from the historical fiction/fantasy that is Gemma Doyle to the present day/craziness that is Going Bovine. I'm not lying when I say that this book was really weird. It was weird in a good way, but still just totally out there. Cameron's journey is set in our world, but there were some fantastical elements, like talking yard gnomes and punk-rock angels, that kept things lively. I must say that I liked the juxtaposition of real life and fantasy, even if I sometimes didn't get it completely. The crazy parts, along with the witty dialogue, made this book extremely funny. There were several times that I laughed out loud. I also liked that the reader never knows if what is happening is real or just a dream, which leaves the book open for interpretation. But even with the weird parts, Going Bovine was also surprisingly deep and heartfelt and somewhat a commentary on our addiction to reality TV shows. The only negative is that this book is LONG. Like 480 pages long. The reason I haven't posted anything in such a long time is that this book took me forever to read. So I think it could have been shortened a tad, but it was still a fun read.

7 out of 10.