Thursday, October 13, 2016

The Diviner's Tale

Don't forget...it's Spooky Books Month here at EtcetorizeReads!


Amazon | Book Depository

Summary (via Goodreads): Walking a lonely forested valley on a spring morning in upstate New York, having been hired by a developer to dowse the land, Cassandra Brooks comes upon the shocking vision of a young girl hanged from a tree. When she returns with authorities to the site, the body has vanished, leaving in question Cassandra’s credibility if not her sanity. The next day, on a return visit with the sheriff to have another look, a dazed, mute missing girl emerges from the woods, alive and the very picture of Cassandra’s hanged girl. 

What follows is the narrative of ever-deepening and increasingly bizarre divinations that will lead this gifted young woman, the struggling single mother of twin boys, hurtling toward a past she’d long since thought was behind her. The Diviner’s Tale is at once a journey of self-discovery and an unorthodox murder mystery, a tale of the fantastic and a family chronicle told by an otherwise ordinary woman. 

When Cassandra’s dark forebodings take on tangible form, she is forced to confront a life spiraling out of control. And soon she is locked in a mortal chess match with a real-life killer who has haunted her since before she can remember.
The book is not about this kind of diviner...

It is about this kind of diviner....
but you can see where the two might meet up~

Review (2 out of 5 stars): As I mentioned last week, I don't actually read all that  many scary books.  For anyone else out there like me who doesn't like being scared, this one is just a little spooky.  There are some ghosts or apparitions and some creepy things happen, but nothing that will scare your socks off.  So, on with the review...

I'm not sure if it's because I wasn't paying close enough attention to the audio version of this book or if it's the style of writing, but I found the narrative a little difficult to follow and confusing at times. At one point the main character is reminiscing about some horrific event from her childhood and then suddenly out of nowhere she's on a date in the present and then she wakes up from a dream??? 

There are some good bits, and of course you're meant to fall in love with Cassandra's father, and you will, but her sons came across to me as major annoying know-it-alls. The one time I liked one of them was when Cass tried to stick her head in the ground (yet again) and insist he didn't see something that he in fact did see, and he just told her she was wrong, wrong, wrong. I also liked when her cop friend asked her what kind of game she was playing, because it felt a bit like that's what she was doing.

I get that she had difficulty in discerning what was real and what wasn't but her constant denial of what was reality was fairly annoying. This book isn't really what I thought it would be. It's not horrible, but it's unfortunately not going to make it to my list of fav reads this summer either.

If you like books that have a very extensive, contrived, and meandering lead up to the climax then you actually might enjoy this book. This one just wasn't for me.


Want to learn more?  In the video below, the author tells you how he came up with the idea for the book and reads an excerpt from the beginning of the book~



What do you think about diviners and/or diviners???  Leave a comment below~


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