Lucian Divine

by Renee Carlino

• ISBN10: 1539459845
• ISBN13: 9781539459842
• Publish Date: 9 January 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Cocktails and Books]

This review was originally posted on Cocktails and Books

Renee Carlino is on my auto-buy list. I haven't met a Renee Carlino book that I haven't instantly fallen in love with. I was excited to see what she was going to give us in a book with a slight paranormal spin to it.

LUCIAN DIVINE brings us guardian angels. Everyone has one and they're supposed to protect their assigned souls. For Lucian, his one charge is Evelyn...who also happens to be the woman he's fallen desperately in love with. So far in love he's turned into a hopeless drunk in order to deal with his feelings.

I will admit, the thought of a drunk guardian angel had me laughing...just a little bit (secretly this is the kind of guardian angel I would want). But as we get to know Lucian we discovered he's so completely torn over his duty and his love for Evelyn that he turns everything off via the bottom of a bottle. It's sad, but he's so sweet and desperate that you just want him to admit all to Evelyn to he could have a minute or two of happiness. But of course, when he does get his minute or two he realizes that sometimes the punishment isn't worth it.

Renee Carlino writes such wonderfully flawed characters. Lucian and Evelyn both have their faults and they purposefully thumb their noses at the rules their supposed to follow, but at the essence of their romance it comes down to faith. Do they have faith in themselves, each other, their love? It's those questions, as they move through their story that ultimately provides them their happily ever after.

I couldn't put this one down. The author had me fully hooked in this angel romance and couldn't wait to find out exactly what happened to this couple.

[Nadz@Totally Addicted to Reading]

Having never read anything written by Renee Carlino prior to this, I was happy to receive an eArc of her latest novel. My excitement stemmed from all the great things that I have heard about her work. My excitement increased exponentially when I discovered that the story involved a guardian angel falling in love with his charge. I am such a sucker for these types of stories. Unfortunately, my excitement was short-lived. For the first quarter of the book, everything was going well, but then it took a nose dive but managed to get back on track within 80% of the story. It was not altogether a bad read, but personally, I believed it could have been better.
Although I encountered issues that placed a damper on my reading experience, there were some aspects of the story which I found entertaining. The parts I enjoyed were

The Premise
As stated earlier, I found the idea of a guardian angel falling in love with his charge intriguing. It reminded me of the Movie City of Angels which starred Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan.

POVs:
All who read my reviews knows that I am a big fan of stories told from the characters’ POVs. In this case, the story was told from the POV of Lucian and Evelyn, which gave me a front row seat into their thoughts and feelings.

Author’s Approach:
The author provided a unique approach to the story. The guardian angel stories have been done several times, however, the author placed her own twist to this story which resulted in a unique creation. I loved her take on angels. For instance, Lucian is a guardian angel who had a close relationship with alcohol, cursed like a sailor and was a notorious rule breaker. They were heavenly beings who were endowed with human emotions. They used social media and they even used the popular dating site Tinder.

The Message:
The message portrayed was profound. It reminded how powerful faith can be if only believe. Although there were no religious connotations, this story reminded how powerful hope, faith, and love were. They cannot exist on their own. The story demonstrated that when you have all three you have the strength to overcome obstacles.


Now on to the areas that I felt needed some work,
Characters:
I had a difficult time connecting with the main characters. I believed that this had to do with the fact that their emotions were all over the place.

Romance:
Personally, I felt that they fell in love too quickly. One moment they are meeting in a bar and the next they are head over heels in love with each other. There was no development in the romance which led to it appearing unrealistic. The relationship moved rather quickly.

Flow:
The story lacked fluidity. There was a lot of skipping in between scenes, which made it feel like large chunks of the story was missing. It was not clear as to the timeframe of the events. Unfortunately, I can’t provide an example as to what I am referring to, without including spoilers, so I will leave it at that.

VERDICT
Lucian Divine had the potential to be a five-star read, unfortunately, it missed the mark. In spite of the issues encountered, I enjoyed the story, but it was not my favourite read. That being said, I would recommend that you read it for yourself as your experience may be different from mine. Would, I read more from this author? Yes, most definitely

[stacey_is_sassy]

DNF at 40%.

I didn't find Lucian as Divine as I hoped.

No rating as I did not finish.

[whisperingchapters]

Review with my co-blogger.

THE STORY

Amanda: After reading Renee Carlino's Swear on This Life, I was crazy excited to read Lucian Divine!! I even got my copy from Renee herself after she read my review!!! But now it's my third DNF book ever! I'm crying, it was so bad I had to stop at half way.

Genesis: I feel the same! I read and loved Before We Were Strangers and Swear on this Life. Both books made it to my fave reads of their publishing year. When I heard Renee was expanding to the paranormal genre, I jumped with glee! I couldn't wait to read a new book by Renee. When I started reading, I was actually liking it and found it funny at times, but soon it started going downhill for me. I'm surprised I didn't DNF'd it like Amanda did. I guess it really was a trainwreck: I couldn't look away, in this case, I couldn't put the book down.

Amanda: I found myself forcing my way through the first 50%. I only got that far because, like Gen, I saw it like a trainwreck - just not a very good one, I guess! LOL! I kept waiting for it to either become clear that the whole thing was meant as a humorous read because it was just SO ridiculous, or for it to just suddenly get better... By halfway, I knew neither was going to happen so I moved on.

Genesis: Ridiculous is right! My jaw would drop open at all the ridiculousness happening. There was this one part that showed Evey couldn't live without Lucian She said she would cut her wrist if she couldn't be with him. and I was so disgusted by this! I used to be a cutter myself and let me tell you, I hate when people joke about it or don't take it seriously. I was offended by the statement and how Evey didn't even think of the consequences of this action. When I reached this point of the story, I knew I wouldn't enjoy it much, and I was right.

Amanda: I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden this seemingly normal human was just accepting the presence of angels, guardian angels, this particular angel's story, and was suddenly in love with him!! Get out of here, that's insane. At one point, I remember telling Genesis that to me, it seemed more like reading the script of a porn video, than a book. And now knowing what I missed (see Gen's spoiler above), I'm angry that I had any part in this book or its promotion.

My mental health history is something I am vocal about - as well as awareness and understanding - and part of that history includes cutting and suicide attempts. That topic and those things are no joke! We take them very seriously at Latte Nights Reviews, and obviously, would never promote them!

Genesis:  I agree. I do not promote them when they are being made fun of or mentioned so lightly. If it's a book that's serious, like Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow, I'll gladly promote it because people should be educated and if that's the only way, by reading fiction, then okay! But it disgusted me so much when I read that in the book. Funny thing is that I wasn't even that offended with the religion aspect, which was also taken lightly and sometimes offensive. I did get offended since I'm a Christian, but the stunt about the cutting had my blood boiling.

THE CHARACTERS

Genesis: Evey was a character I found myself liking in the beginning. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders, with a vision of what she wanted to do with her life. When Lucian came into her life, it's like everything stopped. She would still go to work and everything, but it's like Lucian became her everything, and vice versa. I get that Lucian is a guardian angel and because of the paranormal aspect of the story, it's okay for Evey to fall for Lucian immediately. The problem I had was that I. Could. Not. Buy. It! The romance and the story itself were unbelievably rushed. I told Amanda this should have been a series, not a standalone, because it's like the author tried to make everything fit into one short book.

Amanda: I had the same thought process about Evey in the beginning — I liked her, she seemed like a regular person, and the date at the beginning is totally relatable! Then Lucian happens and everything goes straight to hell! (pun intended) All of a sudden, she's flighty, she bails on working at the beginning, at her bosses and there is no recognition of that at all! Some guy shows up, angel or not, and you're suddenly a dufus?! Nope. Not feeling it. I could not get into this at all — I need to care about the people I'm reading, care about their relationship, and I was closer to hate! Their relationship made no sense — the sex was alright, because who am I to judge sleeping with a guy you've just met because they're sexy and you want to? But to fall in love in the span of what I think may have been 24 hours (?), get outta town!

Genesis: Exactly! It's like Evey forgot how to be herself and be her own person. Lucian was no better. At first, I liked him and could see his appeal, but after? Hell no! He knew he was putting Evey and himself in danger. If he stayed with her, he would possibly die, but he didn't care. He jeopardized Evey's life, instead of stepping back and searching for an alternative. He would depend so much on Evey! I was glad to see that as the book progressed, Evey would tell him that they needed to have distance, like a regular couple, which had me doing a fist pump because it was about damn time she noticed their relationship was toxic and co-dependent.

Amanda: I wound up putting the book down somewhere in chapter nine. When Lucian admits he changed from "guardian angel" to someone who was in love with Evey after he went into someone else's body, and through their eyes saw her naked and it turned him on. Yes, that is a real part of the storyline. Ugh. At that point, I closed the book and had to admit defeat lest I push myself into the dreaded reading slump that occurs post-total-garbage-book!

Genesis: As you can see, Amanda has some negative strong feelings for this book LOL. I really should have DNF'd this one like she did. I had really high expectations for it and it didn't even come close to meeting them. It was a major disappointment that left me disgusted and wondering what the hell I had read.