I was curious about the title, intrigued by the cover, and once I began, I just couldn't stop. That's how mesmerizing I found the story to be.

We're in the early 1800's, Brooklyn, New York, and seeing the world through the gritty, muddied streets of the average Joe/Jane...or rather the ones that once were higher up, knocked down by circumstance and odd occurrences. Young Avery is a girl in a boy's world, just trying to help her father, the only family she has left, as they claw and crawl each day into something resembling a life. Meanwhile, a man claiming to be a doctor tempts homeless urchins with coin and a promise, snatching the ones he wants while leaving the rest to wonder what happened. Perhaps more disturbing than the events I just mentioned is that Avery recognizes him.

By books end, I was gobsmacked. So much happens in a relatively short span of time. We learn what became of Avery's mother, why her father vehemently warns her against visiting the gypsies, the identity and fate of the blue-eyed breath stealing boy from the festival night, the function of Avery's "condition" and the lengths to which some will go to obtain control over all. Some of it's pretty heady stuff, while others you simply feel in your heart and your gut. There's mystery, a little romance, friendship, manipulation, sadistic pursuits of power, freedom, confinement, terror, and above all, the resilience of the human heart to see the error of its ways even when things seem so far gone...well, of MOST to see anyway.

All I can say is this...in my opinion, I LOVED it; whether you do or not is entirely up to you. Take a chance, approach with an open mind, and give yourself over to the history tinted but fantastically altered reality you'll certainly wish most aspects of will stay firmly in fiction.


**eARC received for review ( )

Student Review by: Hayley K (11th grade)
Grade Range: 8th grade and up
Literary Merit: Good
Characterization:Good
Review:
“Once you enter The Tombs you’ll never come out.” The Tombs is a wicked tale about Avery Kohl trying to rescue her mother from inside the daunting Tombs asylum run by the evil Dr. Spector. When Avery was thirteen, her mother was captured by men in crow masks due to her power to see memories of others and heal mental pain through a single touch. Now that Avery is sixteen she fears for her life as she herself begins to show the same abilities as her mother. When she accidentally blows up a machine at her job as a welder in an ironworks factory, Avery must lay low and hide her abilities. In order to save her mother from The Tombs, Avery must embrace her powers and team up with a Romany group as well as her long time best friend, Khan to save not just her mother, but the city of New York from Dr. Spector and The Tombs.

The Tombs had me on the edge of my seat as I was transported into a world full of suspense and dark themes. The horror aspect of the book greatly complimented the industrial time period featuring intensive metalwork in factories and bizarre medical techniques. I appreciated the attention to the details of the time period such as child labor in the factories and the formation of unions. I liked Avery as a character; she was quirky and unique compared to many main female characters. My favorite aspect about Avery was her ability to craft such works of art with iron. The pacing of the book, however, felt scattered throughout the chapters. Some chapters were too slow and dragged the plot or progressed too fast to understand the big picture of the story. I also feel the development of the romance throughout the book was inadequate and felt quite forced; Avery and her love interests lacked chemistry. Overall, I enjoyed the story and the characters. The author did a wonderful job to capture what it would be like in New York during 1882 while putting her own fictional spin onto real history events.

Recommendation: Anyone who likes the industrial age in America and embracing the horrors of the time period and while enjoying characters with supernatural abilities. ( )