Lair of Dreams by Libra Bray expands on the world built in The Diviners with a new heart-racing nightmare that lures you in and refuses to let you go.

New York City is swept up by the lure of Diviners and America’s Sweetheart Seer, Miss Evie O’Neill is at the forefront of the media frenzy. Everyone wants a glimpse at the people who can see beyond the veil of the American dream, but a menacing nightmare is waiting for them to close their eyes.

Picking up shortly after the events of The Diviners, the second installment does not waste time setting up a frightening new epidemic, a sleeping sickness, that is taking the city under its spell. The familiar characters Evie, Sam, Jericho, Mabel, Theta, and Memphis are joined by a new Diviner, Ling Chan, a dream walker who connects with a familiar character, Henry, in the dreamworld. Dream walkers slip into the world of other’s dreams and they may be the only people who can find a way to end the nightmares that call the resting city to “Dream with me…”

As one threat crosses over from the dreamworld into the real one, another conspiracy unfolds in the basement of The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. What is Evie’s Uncle Will and the U.S. government covering up and can it explain where Sam’s mother went to after Project Buffalo?

Is Evie’s newfound fame helping or hindering America’s ability to embrace what they do not understand? Will Henry and Ling’s dreamwalking be able to put an end to the sleeping sickness? And who is the mysterious man in the stovepipe hat? Open the pages and follow the calling of the nightmares.

‘Lair of Dreams’ book review

Lair of Dreams may create an atmosphere filled with supernatural happenings, but it does so in a way that highlights the very real, historical 1920s New York. The New York filled with prejudice, speakeasy hideaways, and an obsession with the glitz, glamour, and pearls of those flapper darlings on Mr. Ziegfeld’s stage. While the world may not be new for readers coming back for a second dose of Bray’s series, the atmosphere undergoes a darker change, exposing an even more unsettling reality left over from the events of The Diviners.

Lair of Dreams spend little time catching readers up and instead chooses to utilize every last page to advance new stories. Evie’s decision to step out into the world as the apple of New York’s superstitious eye, keeps the lead of Bray’s Diviners mixed up in a mess of her own doing while more threatening circumstances haunt others this time around.

Where the second installment truly succeeds is the mastery of weaving 10 narratives together, all while keeping two overarching mysteries looming overhead. Lair of Dreams‘s gray man, the nightmarish man in the stovepipe hat, is just as terrifying as Bray’s first villain, Naughty John and will have you questioning whether you should be reading this book right before you take your own trip into the dreamworld. The characters, divided for a majority of the first half of the book, organically find their way together against a common threat as the dreamworld and reality begin to mix.

Making room for the new Diviners does not mean that Evie, Sam, Jericho, or Memphis suffer from a lack of attention. Rather their story opens another mysterious thread that will likely begin to take shape in Bray’s next installment. The diverse combination of characters range from Ling, a disabled Diviner who is the daughter of Chinese and Irish immigrants to Henry DuBois, a closeted songwriter from the South ensures that no two stories are alike, yet they are all accessible.

The love triangle rectangle that lingers from the first book is explored in an interesting way that does not demand too much of the reader’s attention, nor does it distract from the heart of the Bray’s work — the threats of the paranormal.

As captivating as The Diviners, Bray’s second installment will leave you wanting the third installment as soon as possible. It’s the elephant’s eyebrows!

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray is on sale now. You can add it to your Goodreads list or purchase it from Amazon or IndieBound.