The Dark Divine (Bree Despain)

Title: The Dark Divine

Author: Bree Despain

Publisher: Egmont USA

Length: 372 pages

Rating: 3.5/5

Daniel Kalbi is back in town, and the pastor’s daughter, Grace Divine, is told to stay away from the boy who was once like a brother to her. But Grace is determined to find out what caused Daniel’s disappearance, and to make it right for her brother who was scared by the mysterious incident. But her growing attraction to Daniel estranges her from her brother, and her love for both of them may not be enough to save them from Daniel’s deadly secret.

This cover is beautiful…but I have no idea what it has to do with the book.

Grace is the pastor’s daughter. Could be boring and perfect, but we like her. She’s a good person and has a lot to live up to with the name Grace Divine. But she’s also bossy, spunky, and she learns to be more rebellious through the novel. Yes, there are a lot of biblical undertones- think story of the prodigal son- and there are mythological undertones as well. The biblical parts were woven in much more neatly than the author-created mythology, which was just a little too convenient for the story.

Daniel is a bad boy. We like bad boys, especially ones who have a soft side and a history with our heroine. Grace tries to make Daniel a hero, but history has a way of coming back and biting characters, and as it resurfaces through flashbacks, we learn that things are more complicated than Grace realizes. It’s quite the twisted road. 

The Mephisto Covenant (Trinity Faegen)

Title: The Mephisto Covenant

Author: Trinity Faegen

Publisher: Egmont USA

Length: 464 pages

Rating: 1/5

“Jax, a son of Hell, and Sasha, a descendent of Eve, unexpectedly find love, but Sasha must sacrifice the purity of her soul to save him while he struggles to keep her safe from his brother, Eryx, whose mission is to take over Hell and abolish humanity’s free will.”

I wanted to like this book. The cover is beautiful and the premise is fun: forbidden love tangled in mythology. But I couldn’t even finish it. (I couldn’t even bring myself to write the summary so I stole if off the book!) I tried, for the sake of this review, but my head began to hurt from wincing so much. I mean no offense to the author, but everything seemed so unrealistic and over the top, especially the characters and their dialogue. It felt like a romance novelist trying to write YA, but failing because all she had to go off of were bad clichés. And that's not what YA is about for me.

I’m sure this book is for some people, but not for this blogger!

The Goddess Test (Aimée Carter)

Title: The Goddess Test

Author: Aimée Carter

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Length: 293 pages

Rating: 4/5

“Become immortal or die trying” says the cover of this Harlequin Teen novel. Kate and her mom move back to her mom’s childhood home in tiny Eden, Michigan. A valid premise for any teen novel, but it gets more complicated. Kate’s mom is dying of cancer, and Kate wants to spend all her time with her mom, rather than trying to make friends at a new school. Normally I don’t like books where the premise involves anyone dying, but I was willing to give this one a chance because of Henry. Not a pale, tortured vampire, but a dark, brooding god of the Underworld. Excellent.

After Henry demonstrates that he can bring people back from the dead, he offers Kate a choice. He’ll keep Kate’s mother alive as long as Kate agrees to live with him for six months of the year and pass seven tests. Failing any test means death for Kate’s mother…and Henry too. But if she passes, she becomes Henry’s bride and a goddess.

As a practiced reader, I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that Henry was Hades, god of the dead. Yay for more Greek mythology! However, it took Kate 136 pages to accept this. 136 pages of her doubting what I had accepted when reading the back of the book was frustrating, and it was hard for me to get into the book at first. But as I read on, I came to accept that was just part of Kate’s personality. She’s a little obtuse, but also very selfless, and she grew on me as the book went on, especially as she learns to accept things, and learns to value her own life, not just the lives of people she’s trying to save (her mother, Henry, and the list goes on). Because it turns out that it’s not just Kate versus 7 tests, it’s Kate versus a mystery person trying to kill her before she passes the tests. Just in case it wasn’t hard already.

The moments between Henry (who is still working on getting over Persephone) and Kate were some of the strongest in the book. There was also some good betrayal and plot twists in the novel to keep a reader interested. And of course the major questions: will she pass the tests in time or will she die trying?

This this is fun book, especially if you’re into mythology and romance. And apparently it’s the first in a series, because YA rarely does solo books these days.