The Diviners by Libba Bray YP FIC BRAY

Evie O’Neill has managed to get herself kicked out of town for her latest in a series of drunken shenanigans (and during Prohibition no less!), but fortunately for her she’s been exiled to live with her uncle in New York City!  There she tries to hide a secret from her occult obsessed uncle, she has a mysterious power to read memories from objects, but she’ll need her power because a diabolical serial killer is stalking the streets and she may be the only one who can stop him.  

So the summary above doesn’t mention that Evie also makes many very odd friends that have their own troubles and even tell the story from their perspective.  This can get a bit unwieldy at parts because the book will eb going multiple directions at one, however it is all for the good as Bray’s excellent writing make all the supporting characters an integral part of the story.  Evie herself is wonderfully brash and at times downright unlikeable, which I like in a heroine!  I mean, who says and does the right thing all the time?  I like my protagonists to be occasionally annoying as well as witty, brave, and original.  Evie is all these and more!  The cast of supporting characters is really wonderful and the book feels like a true ensemble.  Best of all might be the wonderful amount of period detail that Bray brings out.  Loads of authors are trying to makes the 20s be the new hot spot for historical YA, but I think bray may be top of the heap for quite a while.  She makes New York come alive so that the setting is a hugely important part of the story.  She kills it with the murder mystery angle as well.  The murder chapters where the killer stalks are so wonderfully creepy! The book has enough mysteries, secrets, action, suspense, and o be read for the sparking plot alone, so it’s really wonderful that it also has top notch characters, prose, dialogue, and pacing!   

So with all this greatness, there simply must be SOMETHING for me to complain about!  Well, it is rather long (just under 500 pages!), but when a book is so good and so filled with so much character and so many ideas you don’t really want it to end.  Even better!  This is the first in a new series!  Even better than even better!  This story is self-contained and doesn’t make you wait months or years to find out how the first story ends!  The Diviners is definitely a must read for fans of historical fiction, mysteries, supernatural, and heck anybody that likes a good book.

You can check our catalog for The Diviners here.

The Girl is Trouble by Kathryn Miller Haines YP FIC HAINES

Iris Anderson finally has an understanding with her father’s detective agency, she can help with his business if she’s honest with him and follows the rules.  All that goes out the window when while she’s trying to clear her best friend’s name in a case of anti-Semitic vandalism, she discovers evidence that her mother’s reported suicide was anything but.  Now Iris is breaking the rules, in over her head, and in way more trouble than she realizes.

I loved Iris in The Girl is Murder (reviewed here) and she doesn’t disappoint in her second adventure.  Haines has created a believable teen heroine.  Yes she’s more introspective and driven and moral and seemingly heroic than most teens, but this is dealt with believably because of all the tragedies that have shaped her.  I also love that she gets called “Nancy Drew” as an insult in this book!  It totally fits, because she is no super sleuth and bungles quite a lot.  Personally, I think we have enough hyper-competent detective savants and I enjoy the more grounded approach of solving crimes through dogged determination.  Another high point is the absolutely splendid job Haines did in capturing the mood of the era.  The look at the ugly side of what many look at as a Golden Age in America was really effective.  Also, Haines does an even better job fleshing out supporting characters.  Pearl, Iris’s best friend, is great and really shines throughout the book.  The best part is definitely the mystery of what happened to Iris’s mom.  It makes this story much more personal and raises the stakes way higher than in the first novel. I was surprised that Haines dealt with this key aspect of Iris’s character so quickly instead of dragging it out over several volumes.  I hope that doesn’t mean we won’t have any more volumes!!!  Well, this is a great murder mystery, historical fiction, and book!  Check it out, but DEFINITELY check out Girl is Murder first!

You can check our catalog for The Girl is Trouble here.

Code Orange by Caroline Cooney YP FIC COONEY A Teen Review by Enriko

And now for something brand spanking new: A review from an ACTUAL Moore Teen. This entry is written by our Teen Volunteer, Enriko. Take it away, Enriko!

Mitty is a common slacker living in New York City.  He was assigned a project for his biology class to study any infectious disease.  Mitty finds an old book about the extinguished disease smallpox and decides to learn more about it.  He makes contact in the book with a hundred-year-old scab.  Now he’s not only scared that he’s infected, but that he could start a global epidemic.

This book is one of the best books I’ve ever read.  It makes you stay up at night and sleep with the book on your hand, waiting to read the next chapter as soon as you wake up. This book is very well put together.  Unlike some books I’ve read, you can read every chapter ina stable pace without having re-read lots of sentences. The book feels so real, that you can believe that it’s something that happened in the recent past and that it was based on a real life event. To me, this was an action, love, mystery, and suspense book changing with each chapter. You might think you know what’s going to happen next, but then the opposite or something you never suspect happens.  It made me want to read moment to moment until the book ended. Cooney did an excellent job on this one, but I would have preferred an epilogue.  You’ll definitely be glad you read this one.

Thanks for the great review, Enriko!

You can check our catalog for Code Orange here.

The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines YP FIC HAINES

Iris Anderson is learning to lie.  It’s 1942 and her mother has committed suicide, her father lost a leg at Pearl Harbor, and they have to move to a poor area of the lower East side of New York just to make ends meet.  Pop can’t keep up with his job anymore but forbids Iris form helping, but when a case involves someone at Iris’s new school she decides to break it herself.  That means lying to all her friends, navigating the wrong crowds, anc uncovering secrets that will hit way too close to home.

Iris Anderson may just be my second favorite breakout character of the year! She is smart, funny, daring, loyal, and in waaaay over her head.  She’s an above average teenage girl in her drive, ambition, pluck, and determination, but a realistic teen girl in her limitations, short sightedness, and occasional naivete. the real breakout star of the book is 1940s New York City.  The author has recreated the sensation of living in the bustling city and filling it with life.  However, she doesn’t sugar coat or white wash the class and race issues of the time period and actually ahs Iris face them head on.  I respect when historical fiction deal with the glamour and the grime of history, otherwise they are betraying the truth and people that suffered injustice. The mystery is sometimes slow to build, but with a wonderful main character and fascinating setting it’s still a great journey.  Best of all, this is the first young adult mystery (historical or otherwise) that had an ending that actually surprised me!  The ending does leave a few loose ends for Iris and I hope she gets to tackle them in a sequel. Fans of historical fiction, mysteries, historical mysteries, or just good stories and great character and settings should grab this one. 

Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence by Geoffrey Canada Adapted by Jamar Nichols 305.23 CANADA

Geoffrey Canada’s excellent memoir of growing up tough in the Bronx has been adapted into a powerful black and white graphic novel. Geoffery tells stage by stage how he learned from child to adolescent to man to use violence to define himself and survive the streets of the Bronx.

This is a well told look at the burden of violence in the inner city. Geoff has to fight and always show his strength or he will lose all standing in his Bronx neighborhood. The older he gets the more violent his peers and he must become to survive until he must make a decision to reject violence or be consumed by it. The art has a simple style that looks like a mix of funky 70s comics and street art and fits the story to a tee. Fist Stick Knife Gun takes you to another time and place and perfectly captures the fear and power of living surrounded by violence. A great read for fans or urban fiction.