Review--The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

A Prodigal Son

A Dangerous Love

A Deadly Secret

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.

Since I haven't gone to the store yet, I've been tackling my TBR pile, which is getting down ever so slowly, and today I did another 1-day read! I read Bree Despain's The Dark Divine and it was pretty good.

I guess one thing that made me uneasy while reading was the religion factor. I don't have anything against religion of any kind and was raised Catholic myself, but for some reason I felt uneasy while reading about Grace being the pastor's daughter. Not in a bad way, just...with certain events happening I felt like Grace should have reacted better.

One thing that did annoy me was that the family, ie: Grace's father and mother, preached about forgiveness. And as her father and pastor he believed it was important, yet the whole family held a grudge against Daniel. That just bugged me. True Grace was working through her feelings and slowly befriending Daniel against her brother's wishes, as well as her parent's (mostly her mother though). But still, it seemed hypocritical of the family to be acting this way and it just bugged me every time they brought it up.

Then as the secrets began to be revealed more and more, Grace herself turns into a hypocrite. When she begins to learn more about The Event that happened that caused the rift between Daniel and her brother, she starts to withdraw from him and is kind of snotty about it sometimes. Not real nasty, but in a way that made me want to bop her upside the head.

But Grace does work on her feelings, she has to do a little soul searching of her own and think for herself about what she wants instead of trying to please her brother and family.

I don't want to get into too many details, because there is a Secret that becomes a big deal and The Event does get mentioned, but it's all kind of surprise like. But it is pretty easy to guess Daniel's Secret and a few vague details as to what happened between him and Jude, Grace's brother. There is one scene that happens near the middle maybe that leads you to know what that is.

But there is still another mystery lurking in the town that is definitely shocking! This I really didn't predict. I briefly thought about it and then dismissed it. The ending itself was somewhat shocking as well and leaves plenty of questions to leave you wondering what will happen next with Grace and everyone else.

Overall I give it 3.5/5 stars. A good read, yet there were a few times I was unhappy with Grace's character, but that wouldn't stop me from reading the next one in the series, The Lost Saint when I get the chance!