The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

Summary:

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 most mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul. (taken from inside jacket)

Review:

I started out not liking The Dark Divine at all. I was all ready to write a review saying how this book just didn't click with me. But once I got past the halfway mark, I started liking The Dark Divine more and more. While I still didn't love it, I can definitely say that I enjoyed reading The Dark Divine.

The book took awhile for me to get into. I just wasn't all that interesting in reading about Grace and some of the other characters. Grace annoyed me in small, subtle ways - like how she always described her friend April like a dog. And then Grace's brother, Jude, was so perfect in the beginning it seemed unrealistic (that changes very quickly, however, and makes Jude a much more interesting character). I'm still not completely sold on Daniel, as the only reason that Grace seems to be in love with him was shared history and people telling her not to talk to him.

But as the plot unfolded, those little things I disliked in the beginning were pushed to the side. I loved the religious symbolism and that it wasn't preachy at all. I loved how the mystery tied into the religion stuff and was just pretty awesome. There's a lot of action at the end and a pretty big twist in which things are cleared up while other things are left open.

While I'm not jumping for joy for The Dark Divine, I did like it and enjoyed reading it a lot. I definitely liked it enough to read the sequel, The Lost Saint, which I hope answers some of my questions. If you want to read The Lost Saint, be sure to enter my contest, which ends tomorrow night!

Rating: 7 out of 10.

FTC: borrowed from library.

2010/Egmont/372 pages.