Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.
Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.
Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous—it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost, Da's death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself may crumble and fall.
In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.
Review:
This is one of those books that I have owned forever and have known that I would love forever, but just have never gotten around to reading. I have no idea why. The concept of this book sounds so awesome. I already know I love this author. I have read both a kids book and an adult book by her that I LOVE. Weirdly, I think this is the first book I owned by the author….I even have it signed by the author and made out to me, circa 2013….I have no excuse. So, basically, I opened this book up 9 years later, and what’s my verdict?
I’m obsessed.
What was I waiting for? It’s literally a combination of all the things I love in one book: a tough girl main character who kicks serious butt, ghosts (aka: histories), a library to end all libraries, haunted old buildings, secret worlds within worlds that most people don’t know about, a very dark family hunter/ Supernatural (tv show) way of passing the torch, empathic powers, love triangles, and a Twilight Zone atmosphere. This is something I’d call catnip for me.
I couldn’t put this book down. For some reason, I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. It didn’t get as high a rating as the author’s other books online. It’s definitely some of her earliest work. But, I loved it. It’s one of those books that will keep you up late at night both because you have to know what will happen next, (What do those librarians really do? What is actually happening in this apartment building? Why are there so many ghosts/histories?) but, also because it’s soooo creepy. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Mac has the ability to read the history of an object or a place too. And she witnesses a very awful murder in the bedroom she has to sleep in! Talk about a dark book…I would not be able to sleep there.
The only thing I can’t help but noticing in more and more YA books, as I get older is how authors write the absence of parents. And I first thought Mac’s Da was dead and I kept getting confused because then the book mentioned her father….But, then I pieced together that “Da” was actually her grandfather. I guess I was just slow on that one… But, what I’m trying to say is, the author tried to make Mac’s parents absent or maybe absent minded because they were all in mourning. And while I can see this working to some extent, I’m not sure it was believable to the extent where Mac would be gone at all hours and return covered in scars and bruises. How did her parents not see any of this???? I get that this life has to be a secret, but I feel like her parents were TERRIBLE, and not just excused for being in mourning. Or am I just really showing my age here?
All in all though, I could not put this book down. I cannot wait to get to book 2. I give this one a 9/10.
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