Review: Lucian Divine by Renee Carlino

Title: Lucian Divine
By: Renee Carlino
My Copy: Netgalley.com
The BookWhisperer's Rating: 

“My guardian angel is a drunk.”

Evelyn Casey's life is at a standstill. She's in her mid-twenties, struggling with the dating scene in San Francisco. Nothing seems to be working out, and she’s starting to think that she’ll live out her days in her crummy apartment with her overbearing roommate, Brooklyn. It's absurd, but sometimes Evey longs for a guardian angel to show up and save the day.

And then he does. Seriously. His name is Lucian and he's a guardian angel, been on the job for two thousand years. His sudden presence in her life is both good—he's brilliant, witty, and warm—and bad—he's brilliant, witty, warm, and hot as ----. But as perfect as Lucian seems, he’s got problems of his own. He’s taken up drinking and he’s brazenly inserted himself into Evey’s life, going against the greatest cosmic law ever created.

For Evey, the rules are simple: You are not allowed to hook up with your guardian angel. But sometimes fulfilling your destiny requires a leap of faith, a confrontation with God.

Yes, God as in God.

I really, really (and I mean REALLY) wanted to like this book.  The thought of a guardian angel falling in love with the soul he has been sent to protect and knowing how frowned upon it was for Lucian to even be attracted to Evey was very intriguing. But, unfortunately, it was not intriguing the entire time. 

I thought the first part of the book, the introduction of the characters and settings, was pretty good.  We got to meet Evey and Lucian and all supporting angels and humans and found out that Lucian has been Evey’s guardian angel her entire life.  He has protected her from all that could bring her harm and now that she is grown up, he is still protecting her from making the wrong choices in men.  But when he can no longer stand sitting by and swooping in, he shows Evey who he truly is – her guardian angel.  In doing this, he breaks a huge rule and then everything starts to build up and then crumble.

This is where things got a little out of hand for me in different ways.  First, I felt like sometimes the book dragged on in sections and then lightening speed sped up in others.  Also, sometimes the characters felt really whiny to me, especially Evey.  I couldn’t understand how Evey became so upset with Lucian when things got bad even though he was fighting as hard as he could and gave up everything for her.   To me, it felt like when things got tough, Evey would get angry, fight with Lucian, and then withdraw when they should have fought together for each other.

I will say that I liked the ending though.  It was nice to know that the Big Guy was listening all along and was able to set some stuff in motion.

Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/2iflA1h