The Archived (Archived, #1)

by Victoria Schwab

[Stephanie]

I cannot explain how excited I was for this book. I even pre-ordered it. The dead on shelves like books? I'm in! But then it sat on my shelf for 9 months before I finally decided to read it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Schwab's writing is very beautiful. I can step back and appreciate her writing. But, beautiful writing can also mean that I was on the verge of being bored a lot. Her writing reminds me of Jodi Meadows or Maggie Stiefvater. For some reason, beautiful writing = bored Stephanie, at least most of the time. The Archived managed to mingle along the line on 'almost bored with this book', but it never managed to cross it.

The Archived was definitely something I wasn't expecting. Which was good and bad. I definitely didn't expect there to be such sad undertones to it. Because what isn't included in the summary is that Mackenzie's younger brother died a year ago (this isn't a spoiler, you find this out about 8 pages in). Her parents decide to move to start fresh and to open up a coffee house. So obviously, everyone is still grieving. It also doesn't help that Mackenzie knows her brother's History is in the Archived somewhere.

The cool thing was that her parents moved into this old apartment building that used to be a hotel, which was renovated into apartments later. I really enjoyed reading about the old apartments and the history there. The Archive and the Narrows was also very interesting to learn about. I really enjoyed the setting, every place had a dark history behind it, or just a darkness to it in general.

Another thing, this books kind of stressed me out. Mackenzie has a piece of paper that magically shows the names of the Histories that escaped into the Narrows and she needs to go return them to the Archive. Sometimes, Mackenzie would get a name on her list and ignore it, so all I was doing as I read was worrying about whether or not she would remember that those names are on her list. Am I the only one this happens to? Like when I character walks into a house, but there's no mention of them shutting the door, so I worry about that door being open. That's how I was about that Archive list! It stressed me out, thinking she was going to get in trouble for not clearing her list fast enough.

So, overall I liked The Archived, though I was a bit underwhelmed by it all. I may or may not pick up the next book The Unbound just because I don't feel an urgency to read it.