If you read the title of this book and tried to guess what "Lair of Dreams" meant or thought "That ominously dark and creepy-crawly looking subway station on the cover doesn't look so welcoming," 1) don't feel bad, you could not possibly have guessed the plot of this book and 2) you're right, that subway station is not a good sign at all. Once again, we're back in the thundering excitement of New York City in the 1920's, a city that never sleeps even when its dreaming, and everything has changed. In The Diviners, Evie and her friends started to discover their abilities and used them to defeat a ghostly serial killer. However, Naughty John was only the beginning. The man in the stovepipe hat has bigger plans than New York City, and in this book you see the true evil of his intentions start to unfold. 
 If you were really annoyed with Evie's character in The Diviners , I can't tell you that you will be very impressed by her in this book. Still dealing with the death of her brother James and the fact that she is in love with the same guy as her best friend, Evie does what she does best and ignores it all to be famous on the radio and drown her emotions in gin. And while you want to judge her and be angry with her about the way she treats people, it's also hard to ignore that deep down Evie is just lonely and hurt by the fact that her brother is dead, her Uncle tried to get rid of her after she started to trust him, Jericho won't actually try and be with her because he's wallowing in his own issues and is too afraid to pursue her, and her ability is making her see the deepest disappointments people have about their own lives. She carries this around with her all the time and hasn't exactly found a constructive way to deal with it yet, but at the end of this book we can see that she will play a role in the future that will push her to become a more responsible character, rather than one that goes with what she thinks people expect her to be in order to feel accepted. We saw at the end of the first book that she has a great amount of courage and promise, but lost herself a little in the wake of what happened at the end of Book 1 (pretty understandably). 
 Whether you like Evie or not, the beauty of these books is that they juggle characters chapter to chapter, and stories break away and come back into the fold constantly. Evie is by far not the most important character this time. In this book we meet Ling, a girl from a family of Chinese immigrants suffering the consequences of the Chinese Exclusion Act and prejudice towards immigrants in general. She is crippled, but escapes every night to dream in a world where she can walk again. In her dreams, she can find other dream walkers and the spirits of the dead. Following her story and her struggle was one of the best aspects of this book in my opinion. She's extremely brave, honest, smart, and obviously is going to play a larger role in the future. 
 In addition to meeting Ling, we learn more about Theta, Henry, Memphis, and Sam in this book and gain a greater understanding of how their powers have affected their lives. What I like most about these books is that each character is made so real that you understand each of them completely from their experiences and stories. Slowly throughout the book, you get pieces of each character that fit together with one another, and in the end you are left with the outline of a puzzle that will (hopefully) be filled in a little more by the end of the next book. (view spoiler)[ In particular, Evie needs to figure out who she is before she tries to pick Sam or Jericho, Henry needs something AMAZING to happen to him because losing Louis in this book was HEARTBREAKING, Memphis needs to heal Ling's legs because she is flawless and doesn't deserve anything that has happened to her, and Theta needs to trust that Memphis will love her no matter what happened to Roy because we all know who that rose is from and it doesn't mean anything good. (hide spoiler)]. Every character will need to band together to fight whatever is next in the plans of the man in the stove pipe hat. What they faced in this book was equally if not more creepy than the first book, and descending into the Lair of Dreams is not something they will easily forget. 
 Despite everything that happened in this book (it was over 600 pages and A LOT happened), new friendships are made throughout every twist of the plot and you can't help but continue to fall in love with the story of the Diviners and their magic. 
 A haunting, thrilling, and a captivating sequel, Lair of Dreams will not disappoint. I can't wait for book 3!