"The Archived" by Victoria Schwab

"Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books."

Sixteen year old Mackenzie Bishop serves the Archive, as a Keeper of the Histories. Histories being the dead, a history of their life preserved within the Archive where they sleep the eternal sleep. But sometimes the more restless ones, the more violent ones, reawaken. A Keeper's job is to prevent these Histories from escaping the Narrow's, the boundaries between the living and the dead, and return them back to the Archive where the History is promptly put back into a state of sleeping and moved to a higher security realm by the Librarians, those who watch over the dead and catalog the Histories. The Crew are those of whom have the task of hunting down the Histories that have managed to escape the Narrow's and have re-entered the world of the living. These Histories are often the most violent and dangerous.

"The fact is, they were people, copies of people, because the only way to truly record a person is not in words, not in still frames, but in bone and skin and memory."

The dead must never be disturbed within the Archive, and yet, someone is deliberately awakening the Histories, altering them, and erasing memories.

This is the first young adult book that I have read by Victoria Schwab. I immensely enjoyed it and found it to be very original and new. But having read two of her adult novels previously to this one I must say that her young adult books just seem to be lacking that extra little ingredient to truly push it beyond the realm of special. This one didn't quite compare to some of her other books. Apparently I am a hardcore fan of her adult books, and just a fan of her young adult ones.

I liked the very real struggle that Mackenzie experienced as a Keeper. She had lost a grandfather and a younger brother, both of whom were shelved as Histories in the Archive. Mackenzie constantly struggled with wanting to see them again, wanting to see if she could prevent them from slipping like the other Histories tended to do the longer that they were awake. If our lost loved ones were within our grasp, would we be able to resist the temptation of seeing them again?

My Rating: 4.25 Stars