The Archived

Today’s post is on The Archived by Victoria Schwad. It is 321 pages and is published by Hyperion. The cover has a gold key just under the title with smoke coming down from it and in the smoke there is a girl’s face. The intended reader young adult and that would be best. There some mild language, no sex, and some violence. But the violence is action based and not really graphic. The story is told from the first person perspective of Mackenzie. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books. Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that 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 sounds so good and it is not bad but it is not bad just not great. There is some confusion about what histories are, what keepers are really doing, there is a love story thrown in. The book is all over the place. There is a mystery, grief, two guys into Mackenzie, and all the general YA tropes for today. But Schwab really just drops the ball. She wants to do too much with this novel. I wanted to like this book, the idea behind sounds really interesting and it has been a long time since I have read a good ghost story but that is not what I got. It is not badly written and maybe I am just not the audience for this novel. There is little character grown and about 90% of the mystery of the background, that Mackenzie questions and brings attention to through the entire novel, is not explained. After reading the book I still feel like I know nothing about this world and I am not going to read the second novel.

I give this book Two stars out of Five. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.