Book Thoughts: The Dark Divine

Title: The Dark Divine
Author: Bree Despain
Series: Dark Divine #1

When I started the book, I really loved the story but I kept getting distracted by the print. The font seemed to be in all bold, which I thought was weird, and honestly, that was the only thing that kept me from getting into this book from the very beginning. But once I got used to that...wow. Awesome book.

Grace is the daughter of a pastor, and her family is almost obnoxiously religious and saintly. On the surface, anyway - but they go out of their way to not talk about anything that creates a real problem. So they don't talk about Daniel Kalbi, Grace's one-time childhood crush and a friend who used to be so close he was like an extra brother to Grace and her older brother Jude. Three years ago, he disappeared, and something happened between him and Jude that Jude still won't talk about. So when Daniel turns up in her AP art class and starts flirting with her, Grace has no one to turn to.

It quickly becomes clear that something is up with Daniel, who is demonstrating abilities bordering on superpowers, and there are almost too many clues lying around (I figured out the secret well before the end of the book). Something's up with Jude, too: he's not acting like himself at all. Grace wants to find out the secret about what happened that night, but it might put her in more danger than she can imagine. And as she works to find out what's going on and how to fix it, her once-perfect family life is falling apart around her.

I really loved The Dark Divine. Grace was such a relatable character, and even though her family was kind of unnaturally nice, I felt like all of those characters could have been real (Jude probably least of all, but even him). And Daniel was the ultimate bad-boy, unlovable-and-yet-totally-lovable character, and I really related to him, too. I also loved the characters of Don Mooney and Grace's father, especially. And the plot had just the right mix of action and romance and mystery...it was great.

Also, Bree Despain did an awesome job with the mythology in this. It was a very interesting new approach to a very familiar paranormal topic (and no, it's not vampires). I'm not going to say anything else about that because I don't want to spoil anything...but, yes, it was awesome.

So, the one-sentence summary of that review: The Dark Divine is an excellent paranormal romance with an interesting twist on the legends that I would absolutely recommend.