After a party trick goes too far, seventeen-year-old Evie is banished from her quiet Ohio town and sent to live with her uncle in Manhattan. It's 1926, the height of the flapper era, and despite Prohibition, New York City is still the most exciting place Evie's ever been. Maybe even exciting enough that her talent for reading a person's history by touching an object they've owned won't seem so strange? Her Uncle Will runs the "Museum of Creepy Crawlies," so the supernatural is pretty normal for him. But over the course of her year in NYC, a series of gruesome, ritualistic killings takes place. Their occult trappings lead the police to seek aid from Evie's uncle, and soon both of them are investigating the crimes. They are clearly leading up to something, but what? And what do they have to do with the cult that died out nearly a century ago?
Loved this book! It's not a fast read by any stretch of the imagination (I started it before Christmas!), but it's very gripping, and very suspenseful. I always tell people that Libba Bray has two settings: creepy, atmospheric historicals, and zany modern-day satire. She's in the first gear here, creating a fascinating look at 1920s New York, and peopling it with wonderful, realistic characters. It was so convincing that Iwas really disappointed to realize that not all of her locations were real (why wasn't there a Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult???). Evie's the main character, but a close second is Memphis, a Harlem resident who hopes to one day become a poet to rival Langston Hughes (all while looking after his younger brother, who sometimes speaks prophecy in his sleep!). There's also Theta, a Zeigfeld girl running from her past, and Mable, the daughter of two workers' rights activists. Sam is a grifter and con artist with supernatural abilities of his own, and Jericho is Will's assistant with a secret past that is only briefly touched on in this first volume. And yes, Bray is clearly setting up for a series here: she introduces all the major players, and while there's a conclusion enough for this book to stand alone, the ending is riddled with hints and foreshadowing clearly meant to set up the next book. I can't wait to see where Bray takes this world!
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