The Dark Divine
by Bree Despain
by Bree Despain
Pages: 372
My rating: B+
Grace Divine—daughter of the local pastor—always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.
Now that Daniel’s returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.
As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul.
My thoughts: As soon as I saw this book in stores, I wanted to read it. I was waiting to get it from the library though, because I’d heard mixed reviews. My library never did get it though, so I waited until I had a gift card. Yay gift cards!
There were so many things about this book I liked, but a couple that troubled me as well. I think I’ll make a list. I like lists.
The good:
1) The cover. Wow! That purple is so eye-catching! I was pulled in by the cover, like I am with so many of the fabulous YA covers out there today. It tells so much, but is really mysterious at the same time. I love that.
2) Grace is a preacher’s daughter, but she’s not preachy. One of my very best friends growing up was a preacher’s kid. I hate how in lots of novels and tv shows, the kids are portrayed as these little angels who do no wrong. Umm…have you ever MET a preacher’s kid? Grace was just an average girl. She wasn’t overly rebellious, but she did struggle with the religion part of her life.
3) Daniel. He was hot. I know that is so expected, but come on. Artistic, leather wearing bad boy? Yes please. (Okay, I’m not sure it said he wore leather, but in my mind he did.)
4) It kept me intrigued and I really want to know more about the future of the characters.
The not-great:
1) Her brother Jude was a tool. I know I should have liked him, but I just didn’t. I won’t go into more, because I don’t want to spoil it. We can put her best friend on this list, too, while we’re at it.
2) The character development was slightly lacking. This may just be a personal thing, but I love character-driven novels. I liked Despain’s characters and think she did a great job of visualizing them. I wanted to know more about some of them though. Kudos for creating believable characters in a fantasy world, though!
3) Some of the fantasy aspects of this novel were too easy to guess. The big “secret” really isn’t much of a secret if you’ve read any other book like this. I guess it wasn’t a big problem for me though, because I keep reading them. I cna see how it would get old for some people, though.
4) When Grace is looking at some of her father’s research, she is reading a text from a monastery. Despain included excerpts of it in the book. I love that, but I have one problem: the font was REALLY hard to read. I know it was supposed to look ancient and whatnot, but if I can’t read it, it’s really useless to me. This is more of a printing preference than a writing one, but still.
Okay, I’m sure there’s more, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I’ve probably lost most of you by now. If you stuck with me through this whole thing, congrats to you!