I read this book years ago when the ARC was provided but wasn’t an avid NetGalley user then and never reviewed this. I appreciate NetGalley having provided me with an ARC! This is the second book in the series so when I first picked this up, I was totally lost. I had to go read the first book to be able to read this. This isn’t as good as the first book but I still really really enjoyed it! Love the 1920s NYC theme with supernatural creatures!

Lair of Dreams (A Diviners Novel: Book 2) by Libba Bray

603 Pages
Publisher: Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: August 25, 2015

Fiction, Teens, Young Adult, Dreaming, Sci Fi, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, 1920s

Evie O’Neill has fought off a serial killer and lived to tell about it. Unfortunately, now everyone knows she is a Diviner. She can walk through dreams and talk to the dead. She meets Henry Dubois from the Bayou and Ling Chan from Chinatown and they each have their own agenda. In everyday life, Ling Chan suffers from an illness that makes her unable to walk without braces and crutches. Henry is looking for a lost love that he left behind when he fled to the big city. The three of them work together to find the source of the sleeping sickness that is taking over the city.

This is the second installment in the Diviners series. I recommend reading the first book before starting this one. The book has a steady pace, the characters are developed, and it is written in the third person point of view. The dialogue is appropriate for the time frame and the author uses a descriptive style to make the reader feel the atmosphere of the story. If you like historical fiction with a sci fi/fantasy twist, you may enjoy this book.

The Diviners is easily my favorite historical, paranormal YA series. Hands down. And while the first book in the series blew my socks off and had me turning on all the lights in my house at night, the second book was a little bit of a let-down. That's not to say you shouldn't start the series, or should stop with book one. Absolutely the opposite: you have the continue to read. Lair of Dreams felt like so many sophomore novels to me - a bridge between an amazing beginning and an amazing next installment. The history, atmosphere, and fantasy elements are all top-notch, but I felt that the progress towards the main mystery of the first novel was sidestepped in favor of sideplots here. Still worth the read, but I'm eager to get back to the main story and learn more about the Diviners' mysterious powers and origins.

A page turner (through most of it... there are some slow parts!). It is full of a diverse cast of characters and vibrant Libba Bray writing. The concept of a sleeping sickness - dreams holding sway over people and trapping them in deadly situations is interesting, but the characters make the book riveting. The book addresses themes of oppression and discrimination well, which makes it a worthwhile read.

Lair of Dreams is another addition in Bray’s acclaimed series. She excels at building setting, character, and in bringing readers into a vivid, magical world.

This books/series is not for me. I tried to read it and get into it and have been trying for a few years and we just don't click. It seems like a case of "this is me and not you" because so many others love it.

The book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention.

I wrote reviews on Goodreads and my blog and forgot to post it here for so many years! I'm sorry!

***
The second volume of The Diviners is even better than the 1st one. It's fast pace and very emotional.

Bray's characters are often impulsive and unwise. That makes adult readers frustrated. However, real 17 year-olds are impulsive and unwise. It's rather remarkable that Bray manages to make them real and special at the same time.

Bray also makes readers to think about dangerous currant political atmosphere in US by introducing the pieces of dark history of this country. Many Americans forget that everyone except Native Americans is a immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. Many of their ancestors were discriminated by majority of this country. She also cleverly brings up the issues regarding LGBTQ and people with disabilities. Bray doesn't preach. She gives readers a chance to live as one of them, and experience their pains and longings.

This series just keeps getting better and better! I absolutely love the writing and the story and I also listened to this on audio while reading the galley and omg, everything about this series is just so good! I cannot wait to read the rest of the series!

Finally, a follow up to the great first book in the series, The Diviners. I liked the first one better because it focuses on Evie and in this one, she's not as bubbly or likeable. But Henry and Ling (the main players in Lair of Dreams) are compelling characters and the setting of 1920s New York is still "positutely" captivating. Solid 3 stars.

What an incredible addition to an incredible series. This book is just enough creepy, just enough mystery, just enough 20s to be everything I need. Bray is an incredible writer that weaves stories together in a way that makes you ne ear want to put the book down.

I absolutely love the writing of Libba Bray! It is fun and believable. In the second installment of the Diviners series, readers visit with familiar characters and are introduced to a sinister threat that lurks in dreams. Bray’s writing brings the backdrop of the 1920s to life with her characters’ lifestyle and raucous banter. It’s the juxtaposition between the character’s chemistry and the threat of danger that keeps me coming back to this series. I recommend this book for those who enjoy fun historical fiction with a great cast of characters as well as those who aren’t afraid of a good scare!

SO. I really enjoyed this. Perhaps not quite as much as I enjoyed The Diviners, but I still enjoyed it. The beginning was a little slow for me and sadly this book was much easier to put down than its precursor. But the story was still really good and REALLY spooky. By the last third I was like, "Okay. The world needs to leave me alone so I can finish this." I also liked meeting the new characters. It just would've been really nice not to have to wait as long as I did to meet them.

Just a great series overall. This book was no exception. I love the direction the story is going and I hope we get more of this story and these awesome characters! Libba Bray is so talented.

If you haven't read Diviners you are missing one of the best worlds created. Libba Bray continues on her first novel by expanding our view of the universe, introducing new characters (and powers), and creating a ghost out of nightmares. I really enjoy all that Libba writes but this is by far my favorite series.

I received an ARC from Netgalley for a review. Lair of dreams is the 2nd book to the Diviniers series. I struggled to read it without reading The Diviners first. Maybe that was the issue. I found it dragged on forever. I put this book down several times. This book just wasn’t for me.

I don't want to give a negative review, but it was a struggle to read this book. To be fair, if I read the first one, I don't remember enough about it, so this book was very confusing. It did not stand on its own. I found myself dreading this story and avoiding it whenever I could. There are too many books I can't wait to read for me to force myself to read this one. I will not publish this review elsewhere because I like to promote authors whenever I can, but I found the dream monsters, the caves, and the changing characters' points of view confusing. I just couldn't make myself care what happened.

I really enjoyed the first in the series. This was a little harder to get into but that may just have been me.

I am unlikely to ever read the first in this series, which makes reading this title even more unlikely. No offense to Libba Bray because I do love some of her other titles.

Disclaimer - I did not finish this book. I made it approx. 75-80% through and then threw in the towel.

Some background though...I read listened to The Diviners around the time it came out and enjoyed it, but it was very long and long-winded, but I wanted to keep up with the series so I requested book 2 from Netgalley. It had been sitting there for YEARS and I was ashamed of that.

I decided to borrow the audiobook from my local library and got a few chapters in when I got swamped with other things and let it expire. Recently, I have been trying to go back and clean up my act with books I need to review and so I was giving Liar of Dreams another go. I reserved the audiobook again from the library and got a good bit in (about 45-50%), then it expired, I reserved it again and at the 80% ish point it expired again and I just didn't want to go back again...

In the first book, I expected it to build this gorgeous world the Diviners are in and the elaborate story thereafter and it did that wonderfully, but was SO LONG in doing it. In book 2, I wanted more story and action and less building... and that is all that it did. It built and built and built and built and at the 80% point I should have been seeing some climax in the story. Yea, I was getting little tastes here and there but no grand one, and it was getting old real fast and I was losing steam. Specifically, I would have been ok with less of Henry in the dream world - experiencing the same thing every time, or the creepy woman in the dreams over and over again, and with less Evie partying (we get it- she likes the drink!). It was all just useless repetition for me. So after trying 3+ times to tackle this book, I am giving it up for other books on my stack. I hate to not finish a book, but it does happen and there are too many books out there from me to keep struggling through this one.