{Review:} The Dark Divine

Title: The Dark Divine
Author: Bree Despain
Genre: YA Fiction
Publisher: Egmont USA (Dec 2009)
Hardcover: 372
ISBN: 9781606841549
Source: Library
Available on: Amazon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Description on GoodReads:

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.

Review:

This book has all the basic paranormal romance, a bad boy, an innocent girl, a mystery, everyone telling the girl to stay away from the boy and things that go bump in the night. You pretty much get what you expect. This is not necessarily bad since as you can tell from my blog I love reading this genre.

I recommend reading this book if you enjoy this type of books but in case you don't and just want to know what this one is about here goes my little summary.

Summary: *SPOILER ALERT*

We are first introduced to 16 year old Grace Divine, the daughter of a pastor and an aspiring artist. Her her 17 year old brother Jude. They are role-model teens. They volunteer at different charities and are always happy to help their community.

Grace then comes across Daniel, her childhood crush, (This is where we meet the guy that comes and changes her perfect world) in her art class as he takes her drawing and ask for a kiss in exchange for her drawing. She later goes home and mentions that she saw Daniel and her family gets upset and her brother makes her promise that she will not speak to Daniel again. We learn from Gracie that Daniel grew up with them and used to be Jude's best friend. Yet, something happened a few years ago that caused Jude to go home covered in his own blood and Daniel to disappear mysteriously. Her family won't speak about what happened between them.

Grace (like us) is interested in finding the reason for Daniel's disappearance.

She goes on a date with a nice guy from school but her date is cut short when her car malfunctions and leaves them stranded in a dangerous neighborhood. He leaves Gracie and goes and asks for help. She then is scared by loud noises and is rescued by Daniel who comes and fixes her car. Daniel tells Grace that he came back to town because he wants to go to art school and needs to take the A.P art class at Grace's school to get accepted but gets kicked out his first day because of his attitude. Grace's sharing his dream takes it upon herself to help him and gets him back into the class.

A family friend dies and her disfigured body is found by Jude. It appears that the old woman died of a cold but her body was found and mauled by some type of animal. Distraught by the occurrence and filled with questions Grace leaves on a motorcycle with Daniel. They end up in the Garden of Angels. Where he tells her some story about angel and a faithful person. At this point some may be thinking he is a fallen angel but then how would you explain the animal like attack on the corpse. Grace invites him to her families Thanksgiving festivities. At the Thanksgiving meal Grace's little brother disappears and Daniel and her go looking for him into the woods. This is where he shows his super strength and speed. Daniel runs holding the baby and Grace on his back. He tells her that he is a Hound of Heaven. These are creatures created by God that have animal like attributes to help them in they job of defending humans from demons. Yet, after a talk with her brother and a Google search she finds out that he is instead a Dogs of Death. In other-words, the hounds of heaven fell from grace and are now possessed by the spirit of a demon werewolf that controls them and makes them kill the person they love the most. There is some lack of trust and confusion between Grace and Daniel. Specially since she learns that the reason Daniel dissapeared was because he attacked Jude when they were younger by accident.

In between the love shared by Grace and Daniel, we also learn that the only way to save Daniel's soul is to be staved in the heart by the person he loves the most. After a few other lost people, Jude decides to hunt down Daniel and end their troubles. It turns out that Daniel contaminated Jude when they were younger and if Jude kills Daniel he will be turned into a monster.

tun, tun, tun, tun; TUN, TUN, TUN, TUN ... To end the story Grace stabs Daniel in his wolf form but not before she is bitten by her brother. She does an act of love because by killing Daniel she seals the deal and will be possessed by the werewolf. She is willing to lose her soul to save Daniel's. This means a lot to her who is very religious and righteous the whole book. Yet, it turns out that since it was an act of love Daniel is saved but becomes human and since she is a good person she might not become evil. Her brother is distraught by the news that he is a wolf and leaves his family. Daniel and Grace decide to stay together use her new powers for good.

So as we can see it is a normal paranormal romance novel. It wasn't my favorite due to its lack of twist and originality but I still can't wait to see what happens next.

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