Angeline, Chloe and Evelyn are three sisters that have banished themselves to Chicago to protect themselves from the empress of nightmares. Unfortunately for them, they have been found and it is time to return and begin defending their world. This book has quite a bit of world building that occurs and started off a bit slow with the descriptions. However, the pace picks up as the story developed. There are mythological creatures from varying cultures which I always love as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more.

This is based on the ARC edition provided by NetGalley.

Thank you Netgalley for the Arc.

Three young women discover they are long-lost sisters with magical powers after meeting on the subway. Amnesia & escalates into a battle against the Empress of Nightmares, who seeks a hidden spell buried in their minds. No Chosen One here, shes dead, the sisters must rise to the challenge instead,, navigating a richly imagined world of monsters, myths, & magic.

The pacing occasionally falters, particularly in the early chapters where exposition slows momentum. Some of the secondary characters & magical systems could benefit from more development & the romantic subplots didn't feel needed in the first story where the sisters are finding themselves & each other.

The premise is engaging, blending urban settings & fantasy elements. Each sister has a distinct personality & magical ability, offering varied perspectives & emotional depth, it gave me the Charmed vibes but less Phoebe/Piper/Pru & more the reboot with a much needed shift to better representation of women of colour.

This follows three sisters that have lost their memory. It opens up to them meeting on a subway train in Chicago and finding themselves about to get abducted because some person name Gehenna wants to “have a little chat” We quickly learn the girls have cast a spell to forget their memories to keep some information safe and overtime their memories come back. This book is riddled with a lot of fantasy creatures both previously existed and new. Early on in the book they were nicely implemented but further on it was overwhelming how many creatures, species, and races that exist in this book. I was super hopeful about this one, but I ended up not particularly enjoying it. I found myself overwhelmed with the amount of info dumping we got and then after learning all this information and we would finally get to the action. The action was over in what felt like before I could even blink. It also didn’t mesh well with me because I was hoping for more magic and there were times it felt too sciency. I can’t quite explain why—because my brain is still comprehending but the book just wasn’t a good fit for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this ARC of The Diviner Sisters. by Olivia Royal. This was a different take on the Magic school story, three young witches are hidden in our world wiped of all the memories of the magical dimension they came from, and when returned having to learn all about it and the other dimensions they can travel to. I loved the mix of our world myths mixed with the fantasy elements Olivia has created, combined this makes a really vivid and complex world and as she writes more I look forward to discovering more of the world. I loved the character development of the 3 sister and can not wait to see where that goes as their stories continue.

As a person of mixed heritage the sister having parents from different dimension and the implications that had was particularly appealing to me.

As the story develops, we are given a different perspective on the main antagonist and their motivations and I am interested to see where this is going to lead.